Dr. Irving Berkowitz, CNM’s Dean of the School of Communication, Humanities and Social Sciences, will be the third speaker in the Montoya Campus Speaker Series. His lecture, “Albania in Transition: Perspectives on the Deconstruction of Communism,” will be delivered Thursday, October 25, beginning at 6:30 p.m. in Room J-122 on the Montoya Campus.

In his lecture, Dr. Berkowitz will pay particular attention to Albania’s difficult and ongoing transition from oppressive totalitarianism to an open democracy and will discuss future institutional and societal challenges. He will also provide an overview of Albania’s history, geography, climate, culture, politics and government, economic problems and potentialities, social conditions and public policies.

The lecture will draw upon Dr. Berkowitz’s many years of engagement with Albania in the areas of planning, program development, and policy analysis and formulation.  He has served as an international political advisor to the central and municipal governments of the republic since the collapse of its Communist regime in 1991. He brought to Albania its first-ever U.S. government grant in 1992, and in 2004-2005 he successfully orchestrated a 20-year Comprehensive Master Plan of Action (COMPACT) for Albania’s capital city, Tirana.