Larry Diamond Click on image to download print-quality version

GRANTHAM, Pa. (March 22, 2006) – Larry Diamond, former senior advisor to the Provisional Authority in Baghdad regarding the political transition in Iraq, will present “Promoting Democracy: Iraq and Beyond” on April 12 in Parmer Cinema, Boyer Academic Building, on Messiah College’s Grantham campus. The lecture, part of the American Democracy series, will begin at 7 p.m. and is sponsored by the college’s Center for Public Humanities and department of politics. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact John Harles at (717) 766-2511, extension 6580.

Diamond is an expert in democratic development and the effects of United States foreign policy on democracy abroad. At Stanford University he is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center, as well as a professor of political science and sociology. Diamond also coordinates the democracy program of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies. 

Diamond co-edits the “Journal of Democracy,” published by the National Endowment for Democracy, where he also serves as co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies.  He is author of several books, including new release, “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq,” in addition to “Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation,” “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives” and “Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic.”

His current scholarly research examines the global expansion of democracy; democratization after conflict; comparative trends in the quality and stability of democracy; public opinion in new democracies, particularly East Asia; and democratic development in Taiwan and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Messiah College, a private Christian college of the liberal and applied arts and sciences, enrolls more than 2,900 undergraduate students in 50 majors. Established in 1909, the primary campus is located in Grantham, Pa., near the state capital of Harrisburg. A satellite campus affiliated with Temple University is located in Philadelphia.