[169] Nov. 2 MTSU Lecture Tackles America's Counterinsurgency Efforts

FOR RELEASE: Oct. 26, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACTS: Dr. Robert Hunt, 615-898-2536; Gina E. Fann, 615-898-5385

NOV. 2 MTSU LECTURE TACKLES AMERICA’S COUNTERINSURGENCY EFFORTS
Author/Professor to Explain Military’s Way of Waging War

(MURFREESBORO)—Dr. Conrad C. Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, will speak at MTSU on Tuesday, Nov. 2, on “America’s Counterinsurgency War: Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Crane’s address is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in the State Farm Lecture Hall of MTSU’s Business and Aerospace Building (Room S102). The lecture is free and is open to the general public and will be followed by a question-and-answer period.
Crane is the lead author of the current Army-U.S. Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, released in December 2006. In November 2007, he visited Iraq at the request of Gen. David Petraeus to evaluate the policy in action.
When the manual was released, Crane told Military.com that warring nations will continue resorting to insurgencies because they cannot take on the U.S. military in conventional warfare. "Enemies will make us fight these kinds of wars until we get them right," Crane told Military.com. "Then they'll switch."
A counterinsurgency campaign must take into account the needs of the surrounding community and the warring factions as well as the history and culture of the area, Crane noted then, adding that the military can no longer rely on traditional conflict rules and practices.
A veteran of 26 years of military service, including nine years as a professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Crane holds a bachelor’s degree from West Point and master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has written or edited books on the Civil War, World War I, World War II and Korea and has published articles on military issues in such journals as The Journal of Strategic Studies, The Journal of Military History, The Historian and Aerospace Historian as well as in a number of collections and reference books.
Crane’s lecture is part of the MTSU Distinguished Lecture Series and is presented under the joint sponsorship of the Departments of History and Political Science, the College of Liberal Arts and the Society for Military History.
For more information about the lecture, contact Dr. Robert Hunt, professor of history at MTSU, at 615-898-2536.


Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.

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IN BRIEF: Dr. Conrad C. Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, will speak at MTSU on Tuesday, Nov. 2, on “America’s Counterinsurgency War: Iraq and Afghanistan.” Crane’s address is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in the State Farm Lecture Hall of MTSU’s Business and Aerospace Building (Room S102). The lecture is free and is open to the general public and will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Crane is the lead author of the current Army-U.S. Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, released in December 2006, and a veteran of 26 years of military service, including nine years as a professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. For more information about the lecture, contact Dr. Robert Hunt, professor of history at MTSU, at 615-898-2536.

For MTSU news and information, visit www.mtsunews.com.

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ATTENTION, MEDIA: If you’d like a color JPEGs of Dr. Crane to accompany this release, please contact Gina E. Fann in the Office of News and Public Affairs before 3 p.m. via e-mail at gfann@mtsu.edu or by calling 615-898-5385. Thanks!