LOCK HAVEN - The keynote speaker for Lock Haven University's April 25 Celebration of Scholarship will be Rafia Zakaria, a lawyer and Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Indiana University.
She is currently working on her dissertation entitled "Negotiating Identity: Sharia, multiculturalism and Muslim women."
The keynote speech is a major highlight of the day's events, and of Inauguration Week celebrations. The theme of the inauguration is "Honoring our past, embracing our future." This year's keynote honors LHU's historic international focus while providing insights for the future.
Zakaria's presentation, "A Woman Named Honor: the Good, the Bad and the Remembered," will focus on how the lessons of our past, its good and bad pronouncements, must be rethought of in the reality of the present.
The story of Honor was told to Zakaria when she was growing up, becoming a part of her education in the rules that make a woman's survival possible in a patriarchal society. The keynote speech will take place at 12:30 p.m. in Price Performance Center. The public is invited to attend this event, as well as all other events and activities of the Celebration of Scholarship.
Zakaria is the first Pakistani American woman to serve as a director for Amnesty International USA. She is an author and human rights activist, focusing on minority and women's rights. She also co-founded the Muslin Women's Legal Fund, which provides legal representation to Muslim women facing domestic abuse in family and immigration law cases.
Zakaria was recognized by her alma mater, Belmont University, as a "Liberating Voice" for women, along with Dr. Maya Angelou and others. She also writes for a weekly column for DAWN, Pakistan's largest English newspaper and blogger for Ms. Magazine in the United States. She has appeared in the New York Times, Arts and Letters Daily, Guernica, Dissent, The Nation and the American Prospect.
Currently, Zakaria is writing another book, "Silence in Karachi: an intimate history of Pakistan," which will focus on the transformations in private relationships during times of political turmoil.
