From "War and Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq"

A book review in The New York Times praised the team of U.S. Army medical professionals, including Dr. Dave Lounsbury ’72, a retired colonel, that pushed for publication of War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003–2007. The Army-published book is intended as a guidebook of new techniques for battlefield surgeons, but the book’s extremely graphic photography, showing shredded flesh, disfigured faces and bloody wounds, prompted “strenuous efforts within the Army…to censor the book and keep it out of civilian hands,” according to the Times. ”The average Joe Surgeon, civilian or military, has never seen this stuff,” Lounsbury told the paper. “And they need to see this on the plane before they get there, because there’s a learning curve to this.” [More...]

Scientist and playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak, a Mellon Learning Associate at Bates College, will discuss his critically acclaimed play, Baghdad Wedding, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 6, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

“It’s a rare opportunity to hear about the war in Iraq from the perspective of a British Iraqi,” says Christina Malcolmson, professor of English.

Abdulrazzak, a biologist doing stem-cell research at the Royal Veterinary College, north of London, became a first-time playwright with Baghdad Wedding, a big hit at London’s Soho Theatre during summer 2007. Praised by London drama critics, Baghdad Wedding was called “‘hot theatre,” by the Evening Standard and “undoubtedly an important, topical play…superbly entertaining,” by the Telegraph. The Times praised the author’s “distinctive voice and special authority,” while the Evening Standard nominated Abdulrazzak for best new playwright of 2007.

Abdulrazzak’s family left Iraq when he was 8 to escape the regime of Saddam Hussein. In the play, he depicts the consternation of westernized Iraqi medical students in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the Iraq War; their horror when a wedding party for one of their friends in Iraq is bombed by mistake by the Americans; and the different ways their commitments to Islam and Iraq develop as a result.

The plot alludes to ethnic wedding movies, like Monsoon Wedding, Bend It Like Beckham and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with a twist. Funny and clever throughout, the play immerses the audience in the political situation to educate Western audiences about the Iraqi middle classes. As Abdulrazzak told Time Magazine, “What I wanted to do was flag what I know about Iraq. It’s now being seen as a religiously crazed country…I wanted to show the middle-class segment that people could relate to.”

The Chase Lounge talk includes filmed extracts from the performance at the Soho Theatre. Abdulrazzak’s visit is sponsored by the Mellon Learning Associates, the College Lectures Committee and the Department of English.

Les Campbell, a leading expert on the development of democracy, visits Bates College to speak about the necessity and difficulty of building democracies in the Middle East at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by the Bates Democrats, the event is open to the public at no charge.

Campbell’s speech will touch on high-profile democracy-building efforts, including the controversial democratization process in Iraq.

Campbell is a senior associate and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Washington D.C.-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he has directed the Institute’s democratic development programs in those regions since 1996.

Campbell has overseen the expansion of NDI’s programs in the Middle East with the establishment of 10 permanent offices that furnish assistance with political, civic and governance reform and development throughout the Arab world. In addition, he has organized election-observation missions around the region, and provided training in the skills necessary for political candidates, government officials and voters to participate in democratic life.

A frequent guest and commentator on Middle East issues for major broadcast news outlets, including CNN, ABC, PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Fox News and several international organizations, Campbell is quoted regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Canada’s Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and many other publications.

Campbell has also been a guest speaker and/or lecturer at American University, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Georgetown University, the University of Toronto, and several chapters of the World Affairs Council. He has been a member of task forces and study groups at the Council on Foreign Relations; the School of Advanced International Studies; the United States Institute of Peace; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among others.

Campbell is a fellow at the Queen’s University Center for the Study of Democracy and sits on the board of directors of the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before joining NDI in 1994, he was chief of staff to the leader of the New Democratic Party in the Canadian House of Commons.

Campbell earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University and a B.A. with honors from the University of Manitoba.

Wright, author of Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam (Simon and Schuster, 1985) and In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade (Simon and Schuster, 1989), has covered nine wars and six revolutions during 20 years as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, the Sunday Times of London, CBS News, the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor. She has been nominated for five Pulitzer prizes for national and international reporting, and she won the Oversees Press Club Award for “best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative” for her coverage of the Angolan war.

Wright, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, has been a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a visiting scholar at Duke University and a Poynter Fellow at Yale University.

Wright, author of Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam (Simon and Schuster, 1985) and In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade (Simon and Schuster, 1989), has covered nine wars and six revolutions during 20 years as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, the Sunday Times of London, CBS News, the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor. She has been nominated for five Pulitzer prizes for national and international reporting, and she won the Oversees Press Club Award for “best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative” for her coverage of the Angolan war.

Wright, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, has been a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a visiting scholar at Duke University and a Poynter Fellow at Yale University.

Picco, who received the Order of St. Michael and St. George from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and the President’s Special Award for Exceptional Service from President George Bush, is best known for repeatedly placing himself in the hands of Beirut’s political kidnappers to complete deals freeing the hostages and 91 other political prisoners. He also was instrumental in ending hostilities between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s and worked to negotiate the Geneva Accords on Afghanistan in 1988 that led to the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The author of Talking with Terror, Picco is chairman of the Ambassador’s Council of the U.N.’s Association/USA and sits on the boards of the European-American Chamber of Commerce and the International Peace Academy. He also is chairman and chief executive officer of GDP Associates Inc., a firm that develops partnerships and affiliations for multilateral global trade and investment.