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Distributed February 20, 2004
Contact Mary Jo Curtis



News
Former ambassador to Afghanistan Robert P. Finn to speak March 1

The Brown University Student Lecture Board will present Robert P. Finn, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, on Monday, March 1, 2004, at 7 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching. Finn will speak on “Afghanistan: Moving Toward Elections.”


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Robert P. Finn, the first U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, will share his experience in a lecture Monday, March 1, 2004, at 7 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green. Finn will be the guest of the Brown University Student Lecture Board and will speak on “Afghanistan: Moving Toward Elections.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Editors: A limited number of seats will be reserved for the press. Reporters must reserve credentials in advance by calling (401) 867-6733.

A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Finn served from March 2002 until August 2003 as the first U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in more than 20 years. He resumed his previous position as the Ertegun Visiting Professor in the Near East Studies Department of Princeton University after serving as the U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan from 1998 until July 2001. Finn’s earlier diplomatic postings include Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in Turkey; Lahore, Pakistan; and Zagreb, Croatia. He opened the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1992. He has received numerous awards from the U.S. government, including one for heroism.

Finn is also a writer whose poems and translations have appeared in the United States, Turkey, France and Pakistan. His book, The Early Turkish Novel, is published in both English and Turkish. He received a B.A. in American literature and European history from St. John’s University, an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from New York University, and an M.A. and Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Finn served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1967 to 1969 and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Turkiyat Institute of Istanbul University from 1976 to 1977; he also was a Fulbright Scholar at Istanbul University. He speaks several languages, including Turkish, Azerbaijani, Urdu, Tajik, Persian, French, German and Ottoman.

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