Panel to discuss U.S. invasion of Iraq

A group of journalists, professors and activists present a panel discussion titled War, What Is It Good For? Should the United States Invade Iraq, to be followed by a question-and-answer period, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, in the Benjamin Mays Center. The public is invited to attend this event, sponsored by the Bates Democrats, free of charge.

Panelists include Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed columnist; Seth Gitell, writer for the Boston Phoenix; activist and teacher Rosalie Tyler Paul, a board member at Peace Action Maine; and James Richter, associate professor of political science at Bates College.

Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for the Globe since 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from its competitor the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. The Boston Phoenix dubbed his twice-weekly essays “a must-read,” and the Globe began receiving more mail about his columns than those of all its other columnists combined.

The first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award for opinion journalism, Jacoby has at different times been a political commentator for WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate; the host of Talk of New England, a weekly television program; and a frequent guest on WCVB-TV’s public affairs program, Five on Five. He practiced law briefly at the firm of Baker & Hostetler in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Boston to serve as deputy manager of Ray Shamie’s 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1985-87, he was assistant to John Silber, president of Boston University. Jacoby graduated from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School.

A political writer for the Boston Phoenix, the nationally recognized weekly alternative newspaper, Gitell addresses state, national and international issues. He also pens a twice-weekly Internet column, “The Daily Jolt,” in which he often discusses the U.S. “war on terror.” Gitell appears frequently as a political analyst on New England Cable News.

Prior to joining the Phoenix, Gitell was the Washington-based editor of The Forward, where he broke various national stories including Hilary Clinton’s hidden Jewish roots and her decision to change her prior position on Israel. He also covered the emergence of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal and The American Prospect. Author of Broken Promise: The Story of U.S. Army Special Forces and the Dega People in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1961-65 (Radix Press, 1996), Gitell received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Paul served as a board member of Peace Action Maine for 10 years, stepping down from her four-year position as board chair in 2002. A delegate at Peace Action’s national congress, she is a retired teacher who taught studio art at North Yarmouth Academy and Waynflete School.

Associate professor of political science at Bates, Richter regularly teaches courses on international relations and the politics of post-communism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in nongovernmental organizations and world politics. His current research concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, with particular attention to the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on the feminist and environmental movements in Russia.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khruschev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity, included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the Bates faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 Bates Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Richter received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.