A Brief History of Harems

Moroccan sociologist and Koranic scholar, Fatima Mernissi. Her new book explores how the sacred texts of Islam are used both by feminists and defenders of democracy as well as the violent fundamentalists which oppose them: "Islam & Democracy" (Addison-Wesley). An earlier book, "The Veil and the Male Elite" (Addison-Wesley) was a feminist interpretation of Women's rights in Islam. Her new book, due out in the summer of 1994 is "Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood".

Washington Post Beirut Bureau Chief Liz Sly has covered the Syrian civil war since it began in '11. "There is an inevitability that Russia is going to emerge as the dominant power in Syria," she says.

Peter W. Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and is now professor of national-security studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Since the late 1980s he has been studying Iraqi war crimes and has also worked closely with the Kurds, who control a small territory in northern Iraq. He'll talk about the effect of a war on the Kurdish people.