CCNY history Professor Beth Baron
History Professor Beth Baron will explain how the Muslim Brotherhood arose in reaction to, and modeled after, Christian missionary inroads in the Middle East in the sixth installment of The City College of New York’s 2015-16 “Presidential Conversations: Activism, Scholarship, and Engagement” series on Thursday, April 21. The talk, “Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood,” takes place from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture’s Sciame Auditorium, and is free and open to the public.
“Foreign missionaries, who included a sizeable contingent of Americans, went to Egypt with the best of intentions, but their activities -- particularly trying to convert orphan children -- gave rise to unintended consequences,” said Baron. “This lesson of problematic interventions in the Middle East is one that we have not learned yet.”
Baron is the author of “The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood” (Stanford University Press, 2014). She also teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is Middle East Studies Association director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center.
Inaugurated in 2014, “Presidential Conversations: Activism, Scholarship, and Engagement” is a forum that features City College faculty sharing their research and creative scholarship with CCNY President Lisa S. Coico.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. More than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in the College of Liberal Arts and Science; Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture; School of Education; Grove School of Engineering; Sophie Davis Biomedical Education/CUNY School of Medicine; and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. U.S. News, Princeton Review and Forbes all rank City College among the best colleges and universities in the United States.