Caroleen Sayej received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2006 from New York University, where she studied comparative politics with a focus on the Middle East. Currently, she is an associate professor of government and international relations at Connecticut College.
She is also a core faculty member of the college’s Global Islamic Studies program. Her research is on the relationship between state and society in Iraq, with an emphasis on the impact of religious groups on state and nation-building. Her first book, The Iraq Papers, was a co-edited interpretive reader on the Iraq War of 2003. Published by Oxford University Press in 2010, it chronicled the planning and execution of the war as well as the prevalent themes of the time: civil war, democracy, human rights, and oil politics. Her most recent publication, Patriotic Ayatollahs: Nationalism in Post-Saddam Iraq, was recently published by Cornell University Press in 2018. It explores the critical role of the grand ayatollahs of Iraq in shaping the state, and is also the title of her presentation.
The mission of the Southeast Connecticut World Affairs Council (SECWAC) is to foster an understanding of issues of foreign policy and international affairs by study, debate, and educational programming, primarily through a Speakers Series of 8 to 10 monthly meetings.
