Growing USF should not endanger its progress with connection to Iran

Florida Politics

UANI CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace writes: "The University of South Florida (USF) and its Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies recently sponsored a conference with a prominent think tank, the Atlantic Council. It should be a cause for celebration that USF is continuing to assert itself as a growing force in academia. But this was not an ordinary event. Until days before the conference, the primary draw of this gathering was a keynote speech from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif — a senior insider of the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism worldwide. The decision to place Zarif on that perch was bewildering. It would have been damaging, inappropriate and amoral.USF would surely think twice before lending its name to an event providing a soapbox for the Kim regime in North Korea, the Assad regime in Syria, or other international outlaws. USF, its faculty and its students need to understand that Iran is on par with, or worse, than each of those rogue regimes."