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Anouar Majid, Ph.D., vice president for Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Humanities, recently presented a lecture at a meeting of the Maine Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) on the relationship between Islam and the non-Muslim West.

Majid gave his address, “Islam and the West in a Turbulent World,” at the Maine AFIO’s Feb. 15 meeting at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk. There, he discussed a variety of challenges facing the Muslim world and their global implications.

Majid discussed events such as Egypt’s struggles with water and food supplies in light of overpopulation; the current rapid, unsetting social and economic transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia; and the power of nonsectarian youth in the region to challenge existing tribal arrangements. 

Majid also answered questions about Morocco, his native country, as a model for change in the Islamic world.

“I enjoyed addressing an audience of experts in world affairs,” said Majid, noting the event was well attended. “I am sure they knew things I didn’t know, given the nature of intelligence work, but the Q&A session was quite lively and invigorating to me.”

This was the second time Majid addressed the Maine AFIO. In 2015, he gave the talk “Islam in Today’s Global World.”

Majid is the founding director of the Department of English, which he chaired from 2000 to 2009, as well as the founding director of the Tangier Global Forum. In January, he was featured in Incomer Magazine about his role in opening UNE’s Tangier, Morocco, campus.