Speaker Series
St. John’s Speaker Series is a popular adult education offering held between services at 10:00 AM on select Sundays from September to May. Nationally noted individuals, from scholars and poets to world leaders and faith leaders, present on pressing issues of the day and impactful historical events to expand our knowledge as individuals and as a community.
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January 19, 2025
Charles Lister
The Fall of the Assad Regime
January 19, 2025
10:00am
Noted Syria expert Charles Lister will speak on the recent fall of the Assad regime and its implications for the future of Syria and the wider Middle East region.
Lister is a senior fellow and the Director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism programs at The Middle East Institute. His work focuses on all things Syria and on issues of terrorism and insurgency across the Levant. Within MEI, Lister currently directs two major international initiatives focused on Syria: “Resolving the Detainee Crisis,” a joint initiative with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization; and the “Syria Strategy Project,” in collaboration with the Atlantic Council and the European Institute of Peace.
Lister was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Qatar and a Senior Consultant to the multinationally-backed Syria Track II Dialogue Initiative, in which he managed nearly three years of intensive face-to-face engagement with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups. He has held other positions at the Brookings Institution and at IHS Jane’s in London, UK. Lister is a Consultant to the United Nations International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) for Syria and a regular consultant and expert witness in counter-terrorism prosecutions and with law enforcement bodies in the United States, Europe and Australia.