Wabash College will welcome home one of its most accomplished alumni in the field of international relations when Ambassador Ashraf Haidari ’01 presents the first President’s Distinguished Speaker Series talk on Thursday, October 2.
The Ambassador will speak at 8:00 p.m. in Salter Hall in the Fine Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Ambassador Haidari is a diplomat and the former Ambassador of Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. The Ambassador will share lessons learned from 20 years of work with USA and NATO in Afghanistan and possible paths forward.
As the Founder and President of a global charitable organization, Displaced International, he will tell the stories of millions of people on the move due to ever-growing conflicts, climate disasters, extreme poverty, and lack of opportunities for youth.
He came to Wabash in 1997 as a refugee from his native Afghanistan. He grew up on the streets of Kabul, teaching himself high school classes using old books and magazines, all the while trying to memorize an Oxford English dictionary. He got a job working for the United Nations in in Mazer-e-Sharif, and after overcoming serious visa issues in Pakistan, made his way to Wabash.
Once in Crawfordsville, he majored in political science with an area of concentration in international studies, and studied the root causes of extremism and terrorism in the United States and Switzerland.
Ambassador Haidari is a Distinguished Fellow in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and a Senior Fellow at the World in 2050 Brain Trust.