Times Herald Record (Middletown - Hudson Valley, NY)
Author Greg Mortenson to speak at West Point
Monday, March 09, 2009
WEST POINT — Best-selling author Greg Mortenson will deliver a public lecture on Tuesday night to Army cadets taking a Military Science Counterinsurgency Operations course at West Point.
Mortenson wrote “Three Cups of Tea,” a story about his effort to fight terrorism and promote peace by building schools in impoverished parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of 2008, he's established more than 78 schools for roughly 28,000 children.
Mortenson's work has been rife with conflict. In 1996, he survived an eight-day armed kidnapping in Pakistan. In 2003, he escaped a firefight between feuding Afghan warlords by hiding under animal hides in a truck heading for a leather-tanning factory.
After 9/11, he received hate mail and death threats from Americans who were angry about his education efforts for Muslim children.
In August 2008, Pakistan's government gave Mortenson its highest civil award, the Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan) for his humanitarian efforts. Pakistan's president will confer the award on March 23 in Islamabad.
“Mortenson’s involvement in central Asia is critical to a holistic approach to assisting other countries,” said Maj. James Spies, the Counterinsurgency Operations course director at West Point.
“The military has re-learned the lessons of counterinsurgency that point out the need to build up the whole of a society to assist them in solving the core problems that created an insurgency.”
The lecture will take place in Thayer Hall’s Robinson Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Attendees should enter West Point through Thayer or Stoney Lonesome gates and bring valid identification. Vehicles are subject to search. Visitors may park in Clinton Lot or other available spaces.
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