October 4, 2007
Tariq Ali to present Media@McGill Public Lecture
Media@McGill, Ï㽶ÊÓƵ's interdisciplinary focal point for teaching, research and public outreach on issues and controversies in media policy, culture and technology, is proud to present a free public lecture by acclaimed novelist, filmmaker, and political activist Tariq Ali. Mr. Ali’s lecture, New Wars and the New Media, will shine a critical light on the realities of the western world’s contemporary media landscape. The lecture will be held Thursday, October 4, at 6 p.m., at the Mount Royal Centre, 2200 Mansfield Street. A Q & A session will follow the lecture.
Mr. Ali has been a political activist since the 1960s, when he was exiled from his native Pakistan for opposing the country’s military dictatorship. He first gained prominence as an activist during the Vietnam War when, as a student leader at Oxford University, he engaged in one of the first televised debates about the war with Henry Kissinger. Following a 1968 anti-war rally at London's U.S. embassy, Mr. Ali is said to have inspired the Rolling Stones to pen the politically charged "Street Fighting Man". In recent years, Mr. Ali has turned his attention to writing books, newspaper articles, and commentaries on topics ranging from American foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America to the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, Counterpunch and the London Review of Books. He is the author of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002).
This public lecture is generously supported by the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation. Foundation president Timothy Aitken is a McGill graduate and grandson of Canadian-born British newspaper magnate and politician Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964).Media@McGill also thanks the Humanities Research Group at the University of Windsor for their help in bringing Mr. Ali to Canada.
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