MARQUETTE IN THE WORLD

Scholars globe trot

Dr. Raju Thomas and Dr. Irfan Omar will call roll in classrooms far from campus this fall as Fulbright Scholars in residence at the University of Belgrade and Muhammadiyah Malang University in Indonesia, respectively.

Thomas, professor of political science, will spend a year in Serbia and Montenegro teaching political science courses and establishing a seminar to enhance that university’s international security studies program.

He adds this extraordinary educational exchange to an already profound resume of experiences that have included being named a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, a visiting scholar at the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program at MIT, and a MacArthur Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He has lectured widely in Britain, Germany, India, Pakistan and South Korea.
Omar, whose areas of study are the history of religions and South Asian and Islamic studies, will spend five months in Indonesia teaching courses that deal with the comparative studies of religion and the traditions of pluralism practiced in the United States and Indonesia. He also will present a course that explores the Muslim experience in America.

An assistant professor of theology, Omar works in Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and Persian, and has participated in international conferences studying Islamic-Christian relations and Muslim intellectual thought.