Yale Arab Alumni Association and American University of Beirut Host International Conference on Urban Sustainability

Under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Ziad Baroud, the Lebanese Minister of Interior and Municipalities, the Yale Arab Alumni Association will stage the largest Yale alumni event ever to take place in the Arab Middle East, an international conference titled Transnational Tides and the Future of the Arab City.

Under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Ziad Baroud, the Lebanese Minister of Interior and Municipalities, the Yale Arab Alumni Association will stage the largest Yale alumni event ever to take place in the Arab Middle East, an international conference titled Transnational Tides and the Future of the Arab City.

The conference, which takes place October 2-3, 2009 at the American University of Beirut, seeks to identify best practices and innovative strategies that globalizing Arab cities need to consider in order to improve urban welfare and sustainability.

The event is supported by the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale University and hosted by the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
Global leaders, experts and decision makers will convene in Beirut to discuss how governments and institutions can harness the potential of the Arab metropolitan network to build a sustainable, integrated regional future

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute and chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will deliver a video address.Also, H.E. Mrs. Bahia Hariri, Lebanese Minister of Education and Higher Education, will preside over a special conference event at the Khan El Franj in Saida.

The conference boasts an impressive list of speakers from Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Europe, and the United States. The confirmed list includes Mr. Talal Shair, Chairman and CEO, Dar Al-Handasah; Mr. Akram Abu Hamdan, General Director, Mawared; Dr. Saleh Jallad, Group Vice President, CCC; Mr. Angus Gavin, Urban Development Division Head, Solidere; Dr. Marcia Inhorn, Chair, Council on Middle East Studies, Yale University; Mr. Gregory Acker, Senior Planning Manager, Estidama; and Dr. Safwan Masri, Director, Columbia University Middle East Research Center, among others.

The Yale Arab Alumni Association is a special-interest group for Yale alumni and affiliates with an active interest in the Arab world, established with the vision of connecting and engaging its global membership to advance Yale-Arab relations and stimulate dialogue on issues of importance to the Arab Middle East. Its membership includes former special assistants to the U.S. President, world-renowned scholars, financial strategists at state ministries, producers at global media outlets, leading authorities on Gulf urbanism, environmental consultants at the World Bank, CEOs of investment firms and deans and administrators at major universities in the region. ;

The Yale Council of Middle East Studies (CMES), at The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, serves as an academic platform where students and faculty can debate the myriad contemporary, historical, political, and cultural issues of relevance to the Middle East and North Africa and beyond.

As a National Resource Center for Middle East Studies (funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI), CMES serves as a central resource for the Yale community, the region, and the nation on issues pertaining to the Middle East. CMES has been pivotal in the organization of major international conferences on wide-ranging topics such as the region’s relations with the U.S., Middle Eastern immigration to the Americas, and the social and historical geography of the Middle East.

The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) was inaugurated in 2006 to harness the policy-related research of AUB’s internationally respected faculty and other scholars, in order to contribute positively to Arab policy-making and international relations.

IFI is a neutral, dynamic, civil, and open space that brings together people representing all viewpoints in society. It aims to raise the quality of public policy-related debate and decision-making in the Arab world and abroad, enhance the Arab world’s input into international affairs, and enrich the quality of interaction among scholars, officials and civil society actors in the Middle East and abroad

For more information please visit the conference website: http://conference.yalearabalumni.org

Contact: media@yalearabalumni.org

or contact the International Business Alliance Group (IBAG), the event management partner, via the numbers below:

Phone Numbers: 00961 1 751180 * 1 * 2

E-Mail: ibag@ibagrp.com

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