The School of Social Sciences and the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility are excited to welcome Omar El Akkad to the Pacific University Forest Grove campus for our 2025 Whiteley Distinguished Lecture. Omar is an award-winning author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the woods south of Portland, Oregon, where he is on the faculty of the Pacific University MFA in Writing program. As a journalist, he has reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world covering the “War on Terror.” His debut novel, American War, a multiple award-winning and year-end-listed international bestseller, has been translated into thirteen languages. His first book of nonfiction, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, will be published on February 25, 2025.

From the publisher: “This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.”