Forum on Charting Change, Challenging Power: Women Leaders in Muslim Contexts

Muslim Women Leaders to Address the Challenge of Change Two internationally acclaimed women leaders will speak at Stanford University on Wednesday, April 15th 2009. The forum entitled “Charting Change, Challenging Power: Women Leaders in Muslim Contexts” begins at 7:30 pm in Annenberg Auditorium. Sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences, the event is free and open to the public. The panelists, all leaders and activists in their own field, are Baroness Kishwer Falkner (Great Britain) and Dr. Shahida Jaffrey (Pakistan). They will address the contemporary challenges and issues faced by Muslim women in the fields of politics, higher education and human rights. The discussion will be followed by a question & answer session moderated by Prof. Julia Clancy-Smith, Department of History, University of Arizona. Baroness Kishwer Falkner is the first Muslim Liberal Democrat Peer in the House of Lords. She served on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the European Union Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and International Development, and the Joint Committee on the Legal Services Bill. She was appointed Chancellor of the University of Northampton in 2008 and serves as a board member on several non-profit organizations. Dr. Shahida Jaffrey is the founder and Vice Chancellor of Sardar Bahadur Khan Women's University, the first women's university in Balochistan, and the third in Pakistan. She also serves as the director for Pakistan's Rural Support Programs Network and Balochistan Rural Support Program. She was awarded the Accolade of Excellence in 2003 and the President's Award for Education in 2008 for her work in Balochistan. Julia Clancy-Smith is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arizona. She works on the issues of migration, gender and religion in the context of pre-colonial and colonial North Africa. Among her publications are Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904); Domesticating the Empire: Gender, Race, & Family Life in the Dutch and French Empires; and North Africa, Islam, and the Mediterranean World from the Almoravids to the Algerian War.