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Ilan Peleg, Charles A. Dana Professor of Social Science, will share his insights on “The 2004 Elections: A View from Abroad” noon Tuesday in Interfaith Chapel, Hogg Hall.
Free lunch will be provided for the brown bag event, which is sponsored by Lafayette’s International Students Association.
While heads of state may have made positive statements about Bush’s victory in the presidential election, says Peleg, many of those leaders were motivated more by the need to get along with the President of the United States than by enthusiasm for his victory. Public opinion in most countries has been negative.
“This is particularly true in Europe, with the possible exception of Russia, and it’s true certainly in other parts of the world,” he says. “The administration has a great amount of work to do.”
The Bush administration showed little inclination to pursue multilateral foreign policy even before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, notes Peleg. In the eight months that preceded the attacks, for example, the United States alienated many by rejecting participation in the International Court of Justice and the Kyoto Accords established for global mitigation of greenhouse gases.
A frequent speaker on political and international issues, Peleg has shared his expertise on CNN, Voice of America, National Public Radio, and other broadcasts. He is editor of Israel Studies Forum, author of countless articles on international topics, and author or editor of six books, including Negotiating Culture and Human Rights (Columbia University Press, 2001) and The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Peleg’s book on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza received a prize for scholarly excellence in 1996. Peleg spent five months on sabbatical at the University of Oxford during the 2002-03 school year.
He has received recognition from Lafayette on numerous occasions, including the Jones Award for superior teaching and scholarly excellence (1993), the Van Artsdalen Prize for outstanding scholarly achievement (1995), and the 2001 Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award.
He had included Lafayette students in his research and mentored others in their own research projects, such as international affairs major Raisa Sheynberg ’04 (Pennington, N.J.), who presented her honors thesis on why the Camp David 2000 Summit ended with no agreement at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.Peleg belongs to the American Political Science Association; Association for Israel Studies, of which he was president from 1995-97; and International Studies Association, to which he presented a paper based on his Oxford research at a conference in Budapest in June 2003.
He served nine years as chairman of Lafayette’s international affairs program and for 12 years as head of the government and law department.