12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
William Lawrence
North Africa Director for International Crisis Group
Bill Lawrence (MALD, Ph.D., Fletcher School) helped negotiate and implement the first bilateral agreement with Libya in several decades, later serving at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. Dr. Lawrence was the 2008-09 Goldman Sachs Fellow and Visiting Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and has taught at Georgetown, Tufts and Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech. He is presently North Africa Director for International Crisis Group. He has received three Superior and three Meritorious Honor Awards from the State Department, and two medals from the Egyptian government in 2011 for advancing U.S.-Egyptian relations. He is the author of "Morocco: Crossroads of Time" (Ellipsis Arts, 1995) and "A Cultural and Cross-Cultural Guide for Cairo" (American University, 1992), as well as several articles, including “Symptom of Crisis or Engine of Development? The Mauritanian Informal Economic Sector” (in Praxis, 1999). For several years, Dr. Lawrence has produced and presented “The Mecca Show” at WZBC in Boston, and as an Arab music producer he co-produced fourteen albums of North African music.
Chaired by Prof. Hugh Roberts, Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History, Tufts University