Leading U.S. Scholar of Comparative Democratization to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Larry Diamond, a leading U.S. scholar of democratization who worked in Iraq in 2004, will give a lecture titled “Prospects for Democracy in Iraq and the Middle East,” on Thursday, Oct. 16 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The event, sponsored by the College’s Peace and Conflict Studies program, is free and open to the public.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice invited Diamond to go to Iraq to advise the country’s transition to democracy. He served in Iraq from January-April 2004, when he resigned after concluding the U.S. was not willing to make what he considered the necessary commitment to the project. Diamond discusses his work in Iraq in Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (2005).

In his talk, Diamond will discuss his experiences in Iraq, his work on prospects for democracy in Iran, and what the U.S. can do to foster democracy in the Middle East.

Diamond has authored over 30 books on the subject, the most recent being The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (2007), and he is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he co-directs the Hoover Institution Project on Democracy in Iran and is a professor of sociology and political science. In May 2007, he was named Teacher of the Year by the Associated Students of Stanford University. He was also honored at the June 2007 commencement ceremony with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education.