For immediate release: Nov. 14, 2012

BLOOMSBURG — Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, will discuss President Barack Obama’s diplomacy with Iran on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 7 p.m. at Bloomsburg University’s Carver Hall, Kenneth S. Gross Auditorium.

This event is free and open to the public.

Born in Iran and raised in Sweden, Parsi moved to the United States to study foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, where he received his doctoral degree. In 2002, he founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which attempts to advocate the conflict that developed between the U.S. and Iran after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C. and western Pennsylvania. NIAC has emerged as a leader since the attacks by representing the Iranian American voice.

Parsi is the author of two books, “Treacherous Alliance” and “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran,” and is considered an expert on U.S.-Iran relations, Iranian foreign policy and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has appeared as a guest on CNN, “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart and many other talk shows, both in Iran and the U.S.

He is the 2010 recipient of the H. Charles Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The award recognizes individuals for their innovative ideas, in honor of Grawemeyer, an entrepreneur and industrialist who graduated from the University of Louisville in 1984.

Parsi’s talk, “U.S. and Iran: Between War and Diplomacy,” is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the Middle East Studies minor. For more information, contact Nawal Bonomo at nbonomo@bloomu.edu or (570) 389-4725.

Bloomsburg University is one of 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. BU serves approximately 10,000 students, offering comprehensive programs of study in the colleges of Education, Business, Liberal Arts and Science and Technology.