NEWPORT, R.I. – Former British diplomat Dr. Ray Raymond will discuss “The Afghanistan War: Just, Vital, Winnable” as part of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy’s ongoing public lecture series focusing on the Middle East.
Raymond’s lecture will be given at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 2 at Bazarsky Lecture Hall, located in O’Hare Academic Center on Ochre Point Avenue. Free and open to the public, seating is limited and reservations are required by contacting the Pell Center at (401) 341-2927 or pellcenter@salve.edu.
Raymond spent more than 20 years in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, working extensively on NATO, U.K.-U.S. relations and Northern Ireland, Middle East and Afghanistan.
From 1997 to 2005, he advised British Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff and the head of No. 10 Downing Street Policy Unit on American politics and public policy. In recognition of his work, he was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Raymond is a professor at the State University of New York and adjunct professor at the U.S. Military Academy. He is a fellow of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and the Royal Society of Arts in London.
He holds degrees from University College Dublin and the University of Kansas and was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Raymond has won numerous awards recognizing academic excellence, ranging from the Maureen Wall medal in 1976 to the Lehrman fellowship, which he received in 2007.
A documentary filmmaker, Raymond is co-producer of the PBS documentary “American General,” a reassessment of Benedict Arnold's military contribution to the American victory in the Revolutionary War.