THIS PLANNED PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED. WE REGRET ANY INCONVENIENCE

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The Tennessee World Affairs Council

invites you to the

International Affairs Speaker Series

“Developments in Iraqi Kurdistan”

Hon. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman

Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the United States

With Moderator Dr. Thomas Schwartz, PhD
Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

Introduction by Ms. Samar Ali
International Counsel for Bass Berry & Sims

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April 2, 2020

Belmont University

Room TBD

5:30 p.m. Registration / Networking

6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Program

• Current paid TNWAC members: No charge
• Future TNWAC members: $10.00
• Belmont University students and faculty: No charge

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Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman

Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the United States

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States of America.

Key to her role are strengthening ties between Kurdistan and the United States, advocating her government’s position on a wide array of political, security, humanitarian, economic, and cultural matters and promoting coordination and partnership. Prior to her US appointment in 2015, Ms. Abdul Rahman was the High Representative to the United Kingdom. She was elected to the Leadership Council of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 2010.

Before her career in public service, Ms. Abdul Rahman worked as a journalist for 17 years. She began her career on local newspapers in London and won the Observer Newspaper’s Farzad Bazoft Memorial Prize in 1993, which led her to work at The Observer and later at the Financial Times. She worked for the FT in Britain and in Japan, where she was Tokyo Correspondent.

Her late father, Sami Abdul Rahman, was a veteran of the Kurdish freedom movement, joining the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1963 and playing a critical leadership role in the Kurdish and Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime. He held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government and General Secretary of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Sami Abdul Rahman was killed alongside his elder son Salah and 96 others in a twin suicide bombing in 2004.

Ms. Abdul Rahman was born in Baghdad. Her family briefly lived in Iran in the mid-1970s before moving to Britain in 1976. She is a history graduate from London University.

LOCATION/PARKING 

Directions will be provided when room confirmed.

Belmont Campus Map Link

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