12:59 p.m., Feb. 3, 2010----The 10th anniversary Global Agenda Speaker Series on “Understanding Political Islam,” sponsored by the University of Delaware Center for Political Communication, will begin at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 24, in Mitchell Hall on the UD campus in Newark.

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The lectures are free and open to the public.

The opening speaker will be Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland on “Rethinking the Islamic World Paradigm.”

Telhami was adviser to the U.S. mission to the United Nations from 1990-91. He served on the Iraq Study Group and on the State Department's Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, and he co-drafted its report, Changing Minds, Winning Peace.

Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.

The series will continue at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays in Mitchell Hall as follows:

March 10 -- Nicholas Schmidle, “Living with Political Islam.” Schmidle lived and reported among the Taliban in Pakistan from 2006-08 before being deported. He has also worked in Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. A graduate of James Madison and American universities, he speaks Persian and Urdu.

March 24 -- Geneive Abdo, “Muslims in Iran and the U.S.” Abdo was a foreign correspondent for many years in the Middle East and the Islamic world, and was the first American journalist based in Tehran after the U.S. cut ties with Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She is a fellow at The Century Foundation and previously worked at the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations to improve relations between Western and Islamic societies.

April 21 -- Maajid Nawaz, “Understanding Islamism.” Nawaz is director of the Quilliam Foundation in London. For 14 years he was involved in the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Pakistan. He served four years in an Egyptian prison where he gradually changed his views until he renounced Islamic ideology for traditional Islam and inclusive politics.

April 28 -- Naif Al-Mutawa, “Political Islam: The Graphic Novel.” Al-Mutawa is the creator of THE 99, the first superheroes of an Islamic archetype. His contact with prisons and with people tortured for their religious and political beliefs led to his writing a UNESCO prize-winning children's tale on tolerance. Al-Mutawa holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Long Island University with degrees from Tufts and Columbia universities.

May 12 -- Steve Coll, “Osama Bin Laden's Legacy.” Coll is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, president of the New America Foundation and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post. He is author of six books, including two about Bin Laden.

The Global Agenda series is presented by the World Affairs Council of Wilmington and the University of Delaware Institute for Global Studies, Department of Communication and Department of Political Science and International Relations.

Ralph Begleiter, director of the Center for Political Communication, will moderate.