Ibrahim Al-Marashi ’01 is an associate professor of Middle East History at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) and a visiting professor at IE University in Spain. Ibrahim graduated from UCLA majoring in Middle Eastern History, received his master’s degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and his doctorate in Modern History from Oxford College. Ibrahim attended a TFAS international program in 2001 and teaches at the TFAS summer programs in Prague.
In this week’s Liberty and Leadership Podcast, Roger and Ibrahim discuss Ibrahim’s time as both a TFAS student and teacher, the nuances of teaching conflict resolution, leadership through passion rather than power, the importance of good grammar, and how one of his articles was plagiarized by British Intelligence in what later became the “Dodgy Dossier,” leading some to incorrectly label him the “mastermind behind starting the Iraq war.”
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS President Roger Ream ’76 and produced by kglobal. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Episode Transcript
The transcript below is lightly edited for clarity.
Roger Ream [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. I’m Roger Ream and this is the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni who are making a real impact in politics, public policy, government, business, philanthropy, law, and the media. Today, I’m excited to be joined by Ibrahim Al-Marashi, a college professor, a published author and passionate lecturer, among many other things. Ibrahim attended a TFAS international program in Greece in 2001 and now teaches at our summer programs in Prague in the Czech Republic. Today, Ibrahim and I will talk about his career as an educator, his experience since attending a TFAS program, the importance of using correct grammar since a misplaced comma in the dodgy dossier labeled him the mastermind behind the Iraq war. You’ll learn more about that in a few moments. Ibrahim, it’s great to have you with me today. I’m looking forward to our conversation. Thanks so much for joining me.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:01:06] Thank you for having me.
Roger Ream [00:01:08] Now Ibrahim, you’re living in California now, teaching at Cal State University in San Marcos. Long way from where you grew up in Baltimore. Tell me a little bit about that. What was it like growing up in Baltimore and also how you learned about the TFAS program in Greece in 2001.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:01:33] So my father was a doctor, a neurologist, and we eventually moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, I think primarily for weather. I spent most of my life growing up in Monterey, California. Nevertheless, I moved on my own initiative, went back to the East Coast. I did my master’s at Georgetown. After my master’s at Georgetown, I studied at Oxford University. So I kept on going east towards more inclement weather. But nonetheless, I was visiting the Georgetown campus while I was doing my Ph.D. and I found actually in the recycling bin a announcement for TFAS in Greece. So I want to say a piece of garbage.
Roger Ream [00:02:31] You have a habit of going through recycle bins.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:02:35] I saw the picture Crete. I picked the paper out. I think it was put in the recycling bin because the deadline was about maybe two days away. I nevertheless got the application at the very last moment, and from that point onwards, I was on my way to Greece.
Roger Ream [00:02:58] Wonderful. Did your father have some involvement at Johns Hopkins for a while? Because you mentioned he was a neurologist.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:03:07] Yes, exactly. He was a neurologist at Johns Hopkins and at University of Maryland.
Roger Ream [00:03:12] Okay. I only ask because my wife is going regularly to Johns Hopkins for neurology and it’s become a familiar place for us. But that’s wonderful. Let’s talk for a minute about the program in Greece in 2001. Obviously, Crete is just a gorgeous place, great setting for that kind of program. And people listening may not know it was a program we don’t currently hold, but we were bringing students from throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the U.S. together for about three weeks at a facility in Crete and had a focus on political economy as well as conflict management. Tell me what that was like to be, you know, thrown in like all the students with, you know, I think at one point we counted something like a dozen conflicts involving all the students there.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:04:07] Yeah, that’s correct. So academically, it was my first introduction to conflict management, you know, conflict management is a technique. You could study a variety of fields, whether it’s political science. I myself was doing my Ph.D. in history, but it is a series of techniques that you could apply to a variety of disciplines, so you could come from law, political science or in my case, history. So I absolutely was transformed by that course academically. And from that point onwards, I began researching on my own initiative, conflict resolution, to the point where my first academic position was at a program of conflict resolution in Istanbul. So that was the academics, the political philosophy course also very much appealed to me. But in terms of the greatest life lessons and that in a program like this you learn the academic sense, but you also take away life lessons in terms of the people you meet, the students you meet. This was the first time I had met so many students from the Balkans. So if we’re looking at around 2,000, the war with Serbia over Kosovo had just ended two years earlier. The Bosnian civil war was still fresh for the participants. A war had the potential of breaking out in Macedonia. So if we talk about the dozen conflicts, there were three in the Balkans. Then we had the Middle East conflicts going on. And at that time, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was particularly intense. The students were coming from that conflict, both Palestinian and Israeli. So it gave me the chance to hear firsthand. About how is it to endure that conflict. But also what was so powerful was in conflict resolution, having the Israelis and Palestinians vent their experience, their fears, their anxieties. And that approach I witnessed in 2001 would be something that I would adopt in my first conflict resolution class in 2014, and that is using the classroom as kind of a controlled setting to have kind of this dialog slash catharsis. And of course, the greatest conflict was looming on the horizon. That was the summer before 911, 2001 where a whole new slew of conflicts would emerge. So it was that setting that was transformative, because not only did I meet students from the Balkans in this kind of setting, coming from an Arab Muslim background, it gave me the first chance to talk to a group of Israeli students. I might have met Israelis and chance occasions in the United States, but you spent three weeks with them, eat with them, study with them, dance with them. That’s a unique opportunity that only that program could offer.
Roger Ream [00:07:27] Yeah, I remember one of the early years I was there. It just surprised me, I’ll put it that way. That there were Israelis who had never met or talked to Palestinians before even. You know, it was just a surprise to me that there wasn’t that kind of interaction taking place regularly. But that was the case. I know at least some of the Israelis that not with all of them. We’ll talk a little more about the conflict management, conflict resolution, discipline and field and technique, as you called it, which is, I think, an interesting word I want to explore. So you pursued this following your Ph.D. at Oxford in history, is that right? And was your first academic job in the field of history or in conflict?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:08:18] Well, both it was teaching the Middle East. So when you teach Middle East history, there’s plenty of conflicts to teach about. So conflict management is a technique that first and foremost, it is about analysis, how to analyze the roots of conflict. And with that analysis, you could extrapolate possible solutions or the problems in achieving a solution. So that was it. It was really a synthesis in terms of my courses when I taught the Middle East. Using religion, history of religion, political history, political science and conflict analysis and resolution to create kind of a hybrid course that I think was much more effective.
Roger Ream [00:09:16] Have you had a firm conclusion that you’ve held to in your career with regard to, you know, how to resolve conflicts and whether the techniques of finding those possible solutions brings about in the real world some resolution of conflicts. And I know we’ve seen some we could cite. There are others, of course that end more by one side, I guess, overpowering the other and dominating the other. Those may not be as lasting. But, you know, I am curious about kind of the mix of conflicts that are solved through that kind of process to reach a peaceful resolution where both parties agree, maybe some give and take, versus ones that either just continue to fester and why they continue to fester. I don’t know if there’s a question in there, but I’d love to hear your response to that.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:10:20] Sure, absolutely. So here’s a very good example that came out of this summer. So every summer and this was also the key what I learned in Greece. In Greece, I was first introduced to a conflict resolution simulation, which now I have every summer in Prague and what I do in terms of my conflict resolution. I actually mimic a real life event going on. So when I came in 2014, it was a simulation about resolving this ISIS conflict. Now, of course, with ISIS, it’s you know, it’s almost impossible to imagine peace and dialog occurring with a group like ISIS, for example, for this horrific terrorist group. But what do they learn in this simulation is what were the socioeconomic conditions that led to the emergence of ISIS in the first place? And in other words, it’s not telling the students to be naive. Conflict resolution cannot resolve all conflicts, but it is to better anticipate how future conflicts can emerge by analyzing what were the conditions that led to the rise of ISIS, that the rise of ISIS was not inevitable, that there was kind of agency among political actors along the way to prevent its rise. And the key element that they learned in the simulation is dialog is essential. And the simulation which we had in the Czech Parliament, I divided the class into the various political factions in Iraq. And what did they learn in that exercise? That dialog was not occurring prior to the rise of ISIS, that grievances were not being addressed. And then we go to this summer’s case where we had a simulation between Russia and about the invasion of Ukraine, a simulation dealing with Russia and Ukraine over a simple matter of allowing grain shipments to pass. And the same is asked, can you ever imagine? And I have to admit, we had no Russian students. We had plenty of Ukrainian students who played the role very well. But this was ask, can you ever imagine conflict resolution between Ukrainians and Russians? And I say you’re missing the point, because, of course, not all parties, you know can you have dialog with as in the case of ISIS. The lesson, the enduring lesson is its regardless or in spite of the political conflict dialog between parties is always important. And in this case, you know, look at the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab Israeli Palestinian conflict. It’s still there. It’s still simmering. But what did TFAS do was in spite of the conflict, they ensured dialog between both sides. And I think that’s important because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of the political obstacles that might be insurmountable, at least on a societal level. Creating that dialog is important because there is still hope for a new generation always to change matters. I think that’s what TFAS has done over the long term is to create kind of a generational way that would make change. So I think that’s the kind of underlying theme in this. It is long term track to or track three developments can transform. It requires investment, long term dialog, education, opportunities that TFAS provides.
Roger Ream [00:14:21] Yeah, it’s interesting. We have our academic director and Bradley, who did her Ph.D. at George Mason around the time of 9/11. And she ended up writing about and she still speaks for us occasionally on the topic of terrorism and the economics of terrorism. And I see connections here because she talks, you know, takes the simple economic tools of supply and demand and talks about the demand for terrorism and the supply of terrorism, and looks at those economic factors in a way that I think corresponds very well with what you’re talking about in terms of conflict and what leads to the rise of this conflict. So I should stress, I mentioned in the opening that, you know, you went from being a student in a TFAS program to a great academic career that’s underway and then also coming back to teach at TFAS in our two programs in Prague. One is specifically for journalists and young journalists and journalism students. The other is a more general program for undergraduate and grad students. I’d like to ask you about both those. What is it like when you get to a program in Prague? Our larger program, which has students from maybe 20 countries, very different backgrounds academically. It must be somewhat of a challenge to teach that kind of audience. But what is it like and how do our students differ at all from other students you teach in your career?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:15:55] Oh, so there’s a huge difference from teaching 120 students in California opposed to teaching 120 students at Charles University in Prague. In California, most don’t even have their passports or traveled. Most of them have not been outside of San Diego County. Whereas in this program, when I teach in Prague, when I’m teaching about conflict, I can point to people in the audience and tell me and ask them, can you share your experience with the class about a particular conflict? So that it’s a more of an interactive experience. And then I use it as an interactive experience in terms of having students in conflict zones talk about trauma experience, not by not only themselves but by their grandparents. I’ve had students from Ukraine who’ve had grandmothers that survived the force famine that’s Stalin or a mastermind. That is something that even as a professor, I can’t teach it. I have to show it. And that’s something I could do in the classroom in Prague that I can’t really do almost anywhere else in the world, because nowhere else in the world have I had so many students from so many different backgrounds congregate into a single place. That’s the challenge as well, because you are also you are literally managing conflict within a classroom setting. How do have Turks and Armenians engage in a dialog is extremely challenging and there’s some other challenges that still I have not surmounted. For some students, let’s say, from the Balkans, they’re just not at the point to have a dialog yet. And it took a couple of failed attempts to realize that, you know, Turkish, Armenians and having them speak to each other. That conflict began in World War One. And it’s still very heated and it’s still very kind of you have to negotiate these very sensitive matters. I can’t imagine having Turks, let’s say Azerbaijanis Armenians speak to each other. I can’t imagine how raw that would be because I know it was already raw and sensitive before the last round of conflict began in the 2020s. Those are the major conflicts. Teaching to a cohort of journalists, it’s much smaller, usually around 20 to 25. That, I would say, is not so much a challenge in terms of their background, but a challenge in terms of a good number of them come from societies where, you know, we take freedom of expression for granted. How do you teach them? You know, the journalism and, you know the structural hurdles they have to navigate going back to, let’s say, maybe particular societies where they do not have the freedom of unfettered expression.
Roger Ream [00:19:02] Yeah. Well, we appreciate what you do in Prague at our programs there. And I know you’re always ranked as one of our top professors. The students really love not only the subject matter, but your approach to it. They pick up the passion in your voice and your teaching. And in fact, don’t you also lecture to them or talk to them about passion? About having passion?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:19:27] Absolutely. That is the ultimate takeaway of my course. And I think the ultimate lesson, if you are to kind of bring this into leadership is the following. Is if you are a leader out of passion rather than a desire for power or self-aggrandizement or ego, that’s what makes, I think, the best leader. So, you know, the way I define passion to them is I do kind of a linguistic exercise. And the linguistic exercise is, the root of passion come from the ancient Greek and it’s the connotation of passion from the ancient Greek is suffering. When we speak of the Passion of Christ, for example, we’re not using it in the sense of somebody being passionate in terms of, you know, the subject of a Mexican telenovela, for example. And there is one possible de Morena that I’m thinking of. We don’t mean passion in that sense, but we’re impassioned in the sense of suffering. And I began lecturing on this subject, actually, because I had a very wonderful student named Maria Jose from Guatemala in 2014. And it was really just the question she asked in a different context. She asked, professor, how do I find my passion? And in that classroom setting I had to think about it. And it wasn’t until the graduation speech that I made where I kind of improvised somehow between when she asked it in the graduation speech, I found the answer for her and it was using this kind of etymological exercise. If passion is connected to suffering, then I told Maria Jose, I know how you can find your passion. I said to Maria Jose, ask yourself this. What is it without which in your life would cause you to suffer? If you have an answer to that, then you found your passion, you see. So most of us, if we’re fortunate, we’re passionate about our family but what subject or what activity, that if it was taken away from you, would cause you to suffer. If you have an answer for that then you’ve got your past. If not, then you start to search for it. And I told Maria Jose, my passion is teaching students like her and all of the students that were assembled in front of me in that year at TFAS. That is a passion take away that program, taking away the ability to teach those students every July, I would absolutely suffer. And that’s what you know, because when you’re teaching 120 students like that, in sense, you’re also leading them. You’re leading them to kind of come to some kind of cohesive whole towards the end. So that is my ultimate takeaway of how to find your passion and also to be a good leader at the end of the day.
Roger Ream [00:22:30] Now, you’ve explained why I suffer when my Green Bay Packers lose. So they must be my passion there. That’s a powerful message for young people to hear and absorb, because I think that tells them that if they have something they want to pursue, it might involve some suffering along the way, too. You’ve got to sacrifice. You’ve got to work hard. But I always keep in mind that if you didn’t have this in your life, you would suffer. What a great closing ceremony message that was. One other thing about the program in Prague that is something I always enjoy attending when I’m over there is the country presentations night where the students all have the opportunity to present something in a few minutes about their country, about their culture, and they do it in very many different ways from sharing some of the traditional clothing that they might wear, the traditional music, acting like the tourist bureau of their country, trying to promote the wonderful things about it, giving some history. But I understand from reports from my staff, you’re a regular participant in many of these on cultural presentations night. Could you tell me about that? I was asked by someone on my team to make sure you ask him about that.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:23:57] Correct. So usually and I’m quite fortunate that there has been since I’ve been teaching a country delegation from Iraq. And so of course, given my Iraqi heritage, those students come from the Kurdistan region of Iraq. I come from the south of Iraq, from the primarily Arabic speaking parts of Iraq. But it’s always a good occasion to show the students, despite the differences between Kurds and Arabs, whenever the students from the Kurdistan region of Iraq play music, I always get up on stage and dance with them. And it goes to show that despite the political problems, there’s always, you know, you always have to look for at the end of the day, what are the cultural factors that unite us. And so I literally try to show that by joining my fellow Iraqi students dancing on the stage with them. And that’s been a tradition almost every year since I began teaching.
Roger Ream [00:25:00] Wonderful. Well, now I’d like to shift gears a bit, since I teased it in the opening. The dodgy dossier. Wow. That was something that suddenly came into your life that you weren’t anticipating certainly. Can you explain that? And it’ll emphasize the importance of good grammar at all times and little ways.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:25:27] So let’s go back to the conflict resolution session back in 2001 when the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians were at their height and where after one particular tense session were the various Arab participants, not just Palestinians, but Egyptians, so on and so forth. And Israelis just had a very intense session. And after it was done. I was sitting on a bench and one of the Israeli participants came up to me and we started talking just on our own. And that’s also a common aspect of the TFAS program, is just after class is the kind of interactions that you have on the sides during lunch breaks where you kind of forge connections for life. And it was just after that very intense session that an Israeli student, a participant, I should say, he was also doing his Ph.D., told me about an online journal that he edited and if I would ever be interested in submitting a chapter of my thesis for that journal. My doctoral thesis was on the 1991 Gulf War, and I said, sure, I would and never really thought much of it. And then around 2002 he asked again, would you want to hand over a part of your doctoral thesis, transform it into an article and published in our journal? And sure enough, it was the summer of 2002. I agreed, just out of the name of friendship, that kind of keep us fostered. And so sure enough, I submitted an article for his journal. Just like my application to TFAS, I submitted the article very much at the last minute just made the deadline. It was published in September of 2002. And then in February 2003, I got an e-mail asking if I had contributed to the latest British intelligence dossier. So now, remember January 2003, we’re just two months away from the 2003 Iraq War. And I replied to this academic saying, I have no idea which intelligence dossier are you referring to? And sure enough, he asked your article in 2002 that you published. Looks a lot like the British intelligence dossier of 2003. So what had happened was somebody in the British government in Tony Blair’s office was tasked with writing a dossier. In 2003, more or less went to the Internet, found my article that I had written, copied and pasted, and submitted it as the latest intelligence on Iraq. So after sending that email to this academic in the U.K., I went to sleep. Woke up the next day and I found that I was on the headline of every single British newspaper. What had happened was this British academic had sent some email saying, look what our government is doing, more or less copying and pasting from a Ph.D. student. What gave away beyond now that plagiarism had occurred was when I submitted that article at the last minute, a grammatical mistake, a misplaced comma that somehow the editors at the journalist and then somehow the person in the British government who plagiarized my article, he also missed this grammatical mistake. So if there was any kind of if you wanted that one piece of evidence that showed without plagiarism had occurred, it was that misplaced comma. So, yes, it was quite a scandal that Tony Blair’s office had gone to an online article, copied it and submitted it as a intelligence dossier. But the interesting thing about the misplaced comma is the following. In the summer of 2003, a book came out called Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and it’s about the proper use of commas. And the book concludes on the final page with this, where the author reminds readers of the importance of using commas by referring to my place of a misplaced comma and how that caused such embarrassment for the British government. And, you know, I thought, okay, this is also embarrassing for me, not just for the British government, but I really thought how many people are going to read a book about the proper use of commas? Apparently three million. 20 years after the plagiarism has occurred, we’re approaching the 20-year anniversary of the Iraq war, not that many people know about the dodgy dossier. That was what my affair was called. But everyone seems to know the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves and which I highly recommend because after reading that book, I became a master samurai of comma.
Roger Ream [00:30:56] Well, I know that this caused you some problems. I think it led to you to testify before Parliament ended and then also your career at the time, teaching in Turkey and some problems there, no doubt.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:31:12] Correct. So I did have to go to the British Parliament and testify on record that my research had been plagiarized. And if I could shamelessly promote my TEDx talk, my TEDx Talk, where I go into detail about the difficulties of going from Oxford University to the British Parliament one day. So I did have to testify in Parliament about this affair. But it was upon moving to Turkey in the following year of 2004, where the plagiarism incident was misconstrued by the Turkish media. So instead of reporting on what had happened, whereas my research had been plagiarized without any of my kind of control or permission or consent, the Turkish media reported on this affair as if I were the mastermind behind the entire 2003 Iraq War. I had deliberately written this document so that it would get plagiarized so that it would justify the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Which caused me a lot of grief for the years I lived in Turkey because everyone would refer to me as the man who started the war at the point where it was so pernicious. This misunderstanding that I finally picked up and left and moved to Spain.
Roger Ream [00:32:48] Yeah, that’s not a label you want attached to, especially as someone who’s doing conflict resolution, trying to minimize conflicts. But wow, what a story that is. And I’ll reiterate your encouragement that people go to the TEDx talk and you’ll find it on YouTube. If you just put in Ibrahim’s name and the dodgy dossier and it’ll turn up. You mentioned a few minutes ago when you were sitting and talking with this person about the Journal article that at TFAS you forge connections for life. Do you ever hear from any of those classmates of yours from the program in 2001? Do you keep in touch with any of them?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:33:34] Absolutely not, because not only do we keep in touch, and I think this is kind of the multiplying of TFAS, a good number of us have gone on to become academics, writers. And that’s the great thing about TFAS, is it forges connections where you have friends in so many parts of the world. So yes, absolutely. Those who have gone into academia or policy. I keep in touch with them, not only them, but also the students. Because, you know, future students when I’m teaching with you. For three weeks and having dinner with you and also coming with you to your country presentations. It’s a different type of classroom experience. So not only am I somebody who’s going to be writing you letters of recommendation, but in a good number of cases visiting you. So that’s one of the great cases of TFAS, is that, I went to one of my students weddings in Georgia. In fact, one of my students from a temporary class in Dubrovnik due to the COVID lockdowns.
Roger Ream [00:34:49] Right. Yeah. Just two years ago.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:34:51] And then now it’s wonderful. So I was able to visit one of my students and attend his wedding in Georgia. Georgia, the country not the state. A Georgia wedding, it’s an absolutely beautiful experience. So, yes, absolutely forge friendships in my case, my particular class, but also with my students.
Roger Ream [00:35:09] Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. Let me ask a question for students. You might inspire to pursue conflict resolution. The conflict management. As an academic career, do you suggest that they pursue graduate studies in a different field like history or political science, and then shift over into conflict or to pursue conflict management as a graduate track?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:35:39] It really depends on what the students want to do. So this is my recommendation. Conflict management is not just a field that has applications for academia or diplomacy. Most of the jobs are actually in the private sector. Corporations are in desperate need of people with conflict resolution and management skills. So if you are interested in a job of the private sector, I would highly recommend just getting a masters. And the school you mentioned George Mason University is one of the best of the U.S. Either to do the Masters or the Ph.D. there. So definitely I would recommend that program. And usually it’s a program that you do have to do at the M.A. level. For the most part, it’s a specific M.A. degree and I would recommend doing that if you want to kind of apply that discipline in a setting such as the private sector or in diplomacy. Yes, absolutely do the masters. If you’re going to do a Ph.D. on the other hand, usually you might have more success on the job market because there are more positions that open up in political science so that you would do a Ph.D. in political science and then choose a specialty in conflict management or resolution, or a Ph.D. in economics for that matter. With that specialty, that will just simply give you more options on the job market.
Roger Ream [00:37:15] Would you say that your Ph.D. in history was extremely valuable to what you’re doing now that knowing history of a region where you might be doing conflict is extremely important, isn’t it?
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:37:30] Absolutely because one matter that I learn teaching is how conflict over the past is still intense in the present and that we can’t proceed. In other words, the past serves as a battlefield for memory in the present and you can build a better future without acknowledging that past. So that the traumas of World War I still affect students in the present, whether you’re in the Balkans or in the Middle East. So it’s a realization that I came to that the past is not just in the past, but it’s very much part of the fabric of who we are in the present and that we need to acknowledge it in the present to build a better futures in these countries we come from.
Roger Ream [00:38:21] Well, on those profound comments, which I think are profound. We’ve reached the end of our half hour. My guest today has been Ibrahim Al-Marashi. It’s been a fascinating conversation with someone who we take great pride in and that he attended our program as a student. But are so thrilled continues as a member of our faculty to enlighten students, to spark their passion for making a difference in the world. Ibrahim, so good of you to be with me today. Thank you.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi [00:38:58] Thank you. Thank you for giving me that experience as a student. And thank you for giving me the honor of teaching every summer and the honor of speaking with you today on this podcast.
Roger Ream [00:39:08] It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast. Please don’t forget to subscribe, download, like or share the show on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you like this episode, I ask you to rate and review it, and if you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org. The Liberty and Leadership Podcast is produced at kglobal Studios in Washington, D.C. I’m your host Roger Ream and until next time show courage in things large and small.
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