Syria and the road to democracy

Political activist and scholar Radwan Ziadeh, of Syria, will speak on “Arab Spring and the Road to Democracy” Wednesday, March 7, at 6:30 p.m. in Bloomsburg University's Carver Hall, Kenneth S. Gross Auditorium. The talk is part of BU's International Faculty Association’s Scholar Speaker Series, and is free and open to the public.

Ziadeh is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights in Syria and co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also the managing editor of the Transitional Justice in the Arab World Project. He has written more than 10 books including “Political Islam in Syria,” “Decision Making and Foreign Policy in Syria” and “The Intellectual Confronts Power: Dialogues of Syrian Civil Society.” As part of a group that would play a key role in Syria’s future, Ziadeh dreams of returning to his homeland to form a democratic political party.

The Arab Spring is a cultural and political movement that changed the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Zaideh will explain why democracies are reluctant to support what he calls “the most liberal and Western-friendly of the Arab Spring uprisings.”