Veterans Call to Conscience Speakers Bureau Joseph C. Farah Short Bio

Joseph C. Farah is a writer-researcher, educator, an independent scholar and published critic. He was the former executive director of The Sycamore Institute, a statewide think tank founded by a group of progressive Democrats in Indianapolis affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Most of Mr. Farah's career has been in education and non-profit management positions. He was a former national instructor for the Great Books Foundation in Chicago before returning to Indianapolis and working for Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) in a number of educational-administrative positions. For fifteen years he was a member of the associate faculty in the Departments of Political Science and Economics where he has taught courses on the Vietnam War, Propaganda Studies, and American Government. He taught "The Economics of Social Issues" course in the Department of Economics for four years. He has also taught undergraduate courses in English Composition, Television Criticism, and Media Literacy. In 1994, he received the "Outstanding Associate Faculty Award" from the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. Mr. Farah has also held positions at Indiana University-Bloomington and Butler University in Indianapolis. As a freelance writer since 1979, he has published numerous articles and columns on a wide variety of political, social, and cultural issues. He is an occasional book reviewer for The Indianapolis Star, and writes a monthly column for Indianapolis Prime Times. He is also a frequent contributor to NUVO Newsweekly. He has produced and hosted independent, weekly public radio programs, each on-the-air for more than a year, on film, international relations, economics, and progressive politics. Over the years, he has interviewed numerous national and international figures ranging from Leni Riefenstahl, the German silent film star and later propaganda filmmaker for Adolf Hitler during the Third Reich, to Kenneth Starr, Whitewater attorney/investigator, to Howard Zinn, progressive author and activist. Most recently, Mr. Farah made a presentation on Fascism, the Military and Corporatism at the Alliance for Democracy annual conference in Gettysburg, Pa. Last summer, he was selected to attend the Teach Vietnam Teachers' Network Inaugural Conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund as part of the 20th Anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial. Mr. Farah's undergraduate degree in Political Science is from Purdue University awarded at Indianapolis, and he holds a masters degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago. (Thesis: The Role and Limitations of Air Power in the Battles of Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh) He served in the U.S. Army from 1960 to 1963, and was sent to Germany during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. His post-graduate educational travel-study has included a German language fellowship in Freiburg, Germany, and economic education study trips to Cologne, Germany and Oxford, England. A longtime student-scholar of the Vietnam War, Mr. Farah has traveled to Vietnam on research trips in 1994 and 1998. The latter trip was with a group of former American pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and imprisoned there as POWs. He is currently president of the Indiana Chapter of Veterans for Peace, and has served on the boards of several no-profit organizations. Some of the major foreign policy and military defense topics that Mr. Farah has written and lectured are: The Economic Costs of Modern War; European and American Fascism; The Role of the Creative Artist in Propaganda; Media Literacy and American Politics and Popular Culture; The Myth of Air Power as a Decisive Factor in War; World War II and the Home Front; and Nuclear Weapons and Political Naiveté. Mr. Farah is currently employed as a writer-researcher for Excelleration, Inc., a management-consulting firm in Indianapolis. His primary client is Learn Something New, an adult community education program in Zionsville, Indiana where he serves as director. Monday, February 17, 2003