Muncie residents and students can dissect the U.S. occupation of Iraq with members of the U.S. Department of State next week.
The city has invited the U.S. Department of State's deputy spokesman, Philip Reeker, and research scholar Kamal Beyoghlow to speak Monday and Tuesday.
Called "Iraq: Occupied or Liberated?," the discussion will feature the two men talking with Ball State professors about the reconstruction of Iraq and the history of America in the Middle East.
"It's the most pressing U.S. foreign policy issue of this decade," Assistant Provost of International Education Cyrus Reed said. "It's the one with the biggest impact on people. "
The two-day event was originally scheduled for last March, but the Department of State had to reschedule.
Robert Pritchard, assistant professor of public relations and retired first captain of the U.S. Navy, said the State Department's delay will give the event a broader perspective.
"Now we can look at a year's worth of (media) coverage and how that's impacted public opinion," Pritchard said.
Pritchard will sit on a panel with Reeker at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Burkhardt Building. He said he's anticipating Reeker to give more of an administrative perspective" on the Iraq situation.
"The opinion in Washington is probably very different from that of Muncie, Indiana," Pritchard said. "That will be interesting for people to hear."
Reeker's town briefing, however, at the Radisson Hotel Roberts on Tuesday is closed to the public.
The National Town Meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday in Emens Auditorium remains open. As one of 11 universities in the Global Access Project, a partnership with the Department of State, BSU was selected to hold the event. Beyoghlow will discuss the U.S. foreign policy for the 21st century at the meeting.
The State Department's campus visit "is a nice recognition of the university and the faculty," Ann Blakey said.
The associate professor of biology is having her Weapons of Mass Destruction students attend one of the six events. This will expose the honors students to the global community and help them understand what that means, Blakey said.
"Events like this allow us to look outside the U.S.," she said. "(Students) are not just learning Indiana ideas. They're learning and thinking internationally."
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