Speaker coming to K-State at Salina to give inside look from Pakistan's 'Kill Zone'

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News release prepared by: Katie Mayes, 785-826-2642, kmayes@salina.k-state.edu

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

SPEAKER COMING TO K-STATE AT SALINA TO GIVE INSIDE LOOK FROM PAKISTAN'S 'KILL ZONE'

SALINA -- Marlon Fick, a former faculty member at Kansas State University at Salina, will return to the campus to discuss his recent experiences in Pakistan.

Fick will present the lecture "Inside the Kill Zone: Reflections on Pakistan from a Western Male in the Society of Muslim Women" at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, April 26, in the Conference Room of K-State at Salina's College Center.

Fick went to Pakistan in late September 2006 and had to leave a little more than four months later.

"In the first week, two Taliban missiles soared over our school and landed across the street at Pakistani President Musharraf's compound, causing some injuries but no fatalities on that day," Fick said. "The brightest part of Pakistan for me is the intense curiosity of my young women graduate students, but the saddest is the lack of educational resources and avoidable suffering.

"Education is the first line of defense against war and poverty, yet Pakistan spends 80 percent of its budget on the military," he said.

Fick went to Pakistan to help its universities update and improve their graduate-level curriculum. He ended up at Fatima Jinnah Women's University, teaching American literature, creative writing and critical theory, as well as advising doctoral candidates. His duties also included trips to numerous universities all over the country, including the University of Punjab, Karachi University, International Islamic University and the Modern Institute of Languages in Islamabad.

Fick said he was charged with advising President Mussharraf and recommending ways to improve higher education so that Pakistan could better compete with its neighbor, India, in the world arena.

Fick is an accomplished poet who received the 2005 National Endowment for the Arts' Award in Poetry. He is the author of five books, with two more forthcoming. One of his books is a nonfiction work bearing the same name as his upcoming lecture at K-State at Salina.

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