EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 4 p.m. Sept. 21, 2011.

EVENT: Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi?a 33-year-old scholar, columnist, businessman and Twitter commentator?will give the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy’s 2011 Josh Rosenthal Education Fund Lecture. His talk will focus on the changes in the Middle East.

Time magazine says Al-Qassemi is “shaping the conversation” amid the sweeping changes in the Middle East. Noting his role as an influential Twitter commentator, National Public Radio says Al-Qassemi “wrote the first draft of Middle East history in short sentences tapped out on his computer and his cell phone.”

Al-Qassemi is a nonresident fellow at the Dubai School of Government, and he teaches Middle Eastern history and entrepreneurship as a lecturer at Dubai Men’s College. He is also the founder and chairman of Barjeel Securities, a financial products company, and the managing director of Al-Saud Co., Ltd., which specializes in equity markets, real estate and construction. He writes columns for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi and The Huffington Post, among several other global publications.

The lecture and reception are free and open to the public. Join the conversation on Twitter: #2011rosenthal. The lecture can be viewed via a webcast at http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/events/2011rosenthal

PLACE: Annenberg Auditorium in Weill Hall, 735 S. State St. Central Campus map: http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/map/central/index.cfm?region=B7

SPONSOR: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy’s Josh Rosenthal Education Fund, created in memory of Josh Rosenthal, a 1979 U-M graduate who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.