Global Educator Visits With Graduate Students

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 21, 2017) — Zuhair Humadi, founding general director of the Higher Committee for Education Development in Iraq, visited the University of Kentucky recently.

His first priority was to meet with administrators, faculty and staff instrumental in the establishment of the Higher Committee for Educational Development initiative at UK. He holds a doctoral degree in political science from Southern Illinois University; taught at Kansas State University and Kent State University's Florence, Italy campus; and founded the Institute for Iraqi Studies at Boston University, in Boston, Massachusetts.

His second reason for visiting Lexington was no less important to him. He visited extensively with enrolled graduate students from Iraq and students in the UK Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

He presented a lecture titled “Iraq: The Arab East in the Eye of the Storm” on the topic of U.S. involvement in violent conflicts in the Middle East and the consequences for Iraq, the Arab East and for U.S. diplomacy.

UK is one of the 22 founding members of the American Universities Iraq Consortium and participated in the initial meeting of the Iraq Education Initiative in January 2009 in Baghdad and Sulaemaniya, Iraq. The UK Graduate School has enrolled more than 45 students since 2010 in master's and doctoral degree programs in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment; Gatton College of Business and Economics; College of Arts and Sciences; College of Education; College of Engineering; and College of Medicine.