Iranian-American Author Reza Aslan to Speak at CSU Monfort Professor-in-Residence Lecture March 9

Iranian-American author and scholar Reza Aslan will serve as a Monfort Professor-in-Residence at Colorado State University March 9-10.

Aslan will present a lecture discussing “How to Win a Cosmic War” at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 9 in the Lory Student Center Theater on campus. A book signing will follow. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Aslan is a religious scholar and New York Times best-selling author. His books include: “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam” and “How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.” He speaks and writes about issues of religion, specifically those pertaining to Islam and its interactions with the rest of the world.

Aslan has degrees in religion from Santa Clara University, Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a master’s degree of fine arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors for both the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, Abraham’s Vision, an interfaith peace organization and PEN USA.

Aslan is cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of BoomGen Studios, the first ever motion picture company focused entirely on entertainment about the Greater Middle East and its Diaspora communities, as well as Editorial Executive of Mecca.com. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Along with his lecture at CSU, Aslan will attend and speak in classes, a student and faculty luncheon and a reception with student organizations.

The Monfort Professor-In-Residence program brings accomplished leaders from business, government and the arts to campus to interact with students and enrich their learning experiences. The program is provided through the Monfort Excellence Fund. Some of the leaders who have visited CSU include Joann DiGennaro, president of the Center for Excellence in Education; Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society; Carl Williams, civil rights attorney; Robert Fornaro, president, AirTran Airways; and Kent Rominger, former NASA space shuttle commander and vice president of Advanced Programs, ATK Launch Systems.

Aslan’s visit is sponsored by the Monfort Professor-in-Residence Program, ASAP and SLiCE.

ASAP is the student programming organization at Colorado State University. As part of Campus Activities, they program concerts, lectures, comedians, films, and other programs for the students at CSU. For further information, please contact ASAP at (970) 491-2727 or check out their website at www.asap.colostate.edu.

For more information about the lecture, please call Emily Burnett at ASAP_lectures@mail.colostate.edu or (970) 491-2727.

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