Cal State L.A. Experts Available to Speak to Media on 9/11

With the upcoming anniversary of the September 11 national tragedy, Cal State L.A. has professors who are available to comment about national security, Middle Eastern history, terrorist activity, international relations, aviation safety, Third World development, and more.

Kazem Alamdari
Assistant Professor of Sociology; Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Alamdari’s area of specialization includes Third World development and social change, democratization in the Third World, Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic societies and Iran. He has lectured throughout the United States on the topic of Muslim, Arab and Iranian communities. Dr. Alamdari has appeared on local television and radio stations on Third World social issues. He has taught at several institutions, including University of Tehran and UCLA.

Blair J. Berkley
Associate Professor of Management; Ph.D., University of Southern California
Dr. Berkley’s can speak on changes in airline security since September 11, 2001. His varied research interests include disruptive airline passengers (“air rage”), on-board aircraft security and aviation law. He is the co-author, with Cal State L.A. management professor Mohammad Ala, of “Identifying and Controlling Threatening Airline Passengers”(Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, August 2001).

Christopher Endy
Assistant Professor of History; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Endy conducts research on the history of U.S. international relations. His particular interests include the political dimensions of international tourism and post-1945 U.S. relations with Western Europe. His articles have appeared in the journals, Diplomatic History and Annales: Histoire Sciences Sociales.

Stuart P. Fischoff
Professor of Psychology; Ph.D., New School For Social Research
Dr. Fischoff is a clinical psychologist, president of the Association for Media Psychology and founder and executive director of the Psychotherapy Screening Guild. As a national and international resource on media psychology, he has been interviewed by media on a wide array of subjects, including the effect of the Bin Laden videotapes on American viewers, the psychological impact of television’s coverage of terrorism, and how people should properly handle viewing such televised disasters as the World Trade Center destruction.

Afshin Matin-asgari
Assistant Professor of History; Ph.D., UCLA
Dr. Matin-asgari’s areas of specialization are 20th-century Middle East, modern Iran, and modern Islamic political and intellectual movements. He has published articles in Iranian Studies, Critique, South Asia Bulletin and other academic journals. His book, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (Mazda Publishing), was published in 2001, and a Persian translation of the book’s manuscript has been published in Iran. Dr. Matin-asgari teaches various courses in Middle East history, world history, Islam, and comparative religion.

Michael Siler
Associate Professor of Political Science; Ph.D., USC
Dr. Siler teaches international relations, American foreign policy, U.S. national security policy, comparative politics, public ethics and public administration. His primary areas of expertise are comparative nuclear proliferation studies, national security theory and policy, international relations, international terrorist organizations, and ancient and modern military history. He has had the following articles published in the Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, (M.E. Sharpe Press, 2002): “Hunt for Al-Qaeda and Affiliated Terrorist Networks”; “The Financial War on Global Terrorism”; “Al-Qaeda”; “Osama bin Laden”; “The 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania”; and “Colin Powell.”

Frank Tullo
Adjunct Professor of Technology; M.S., Pepperdine University
Professor Tullo’s area of interest is in aviation human factors, especially in the aspects of commercial aircraft accidents. He served as chairman of the Air Transport Association Human Factors Committee from 1994 to 1999, when he retired from Continental Airlines. He was very active in the pioneering days of CRM (crew resource management) in the early 1980s, and helped develop the highly regarded Continental Airlines CRM course. Tullo served in many positions at Continental during his 33-year flying career. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1959, and is frequently consulted as an expert on aviation.

If you need a quick directory of experts for other breaking news items, go directly to Guide to the Experts at Cal State L.A., <http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/media/jourpage.htm>. The on-line media guide includes 360 experts from Cal State L.A. who are available and willing to speak to the media.

Contact: Carol Selkin, Media Relations Director, (323) 343-3044