Since Uzbekistan’s former president Islam Karimov’s death in 2017 after 25 years of rule, the new leadership of the country has carried out a bevy of reforms. Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a lecture by researcher Noah Tucker, who will discuss recent developments in Uzbekistan and what they mean for the future of the country. Refreshments will be provided. Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite.

Noah Tucker is a Senior Editor for Radio Ozodlik, the Uzbek Service at RFE/RL in Prague, and an associate at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs Central Asia Program. He was previously Managing Editor at Registan.net, a researcher for the multi-year Harvard/Carnegie Islam in Eurasia Project. Noah has worked on or in Uzbekistan since 2002. He spent three years in the country as an NGO project director in Tashkent and returned again for fieldwork for the summer of 2007 for a project investigating the domestic effects of the foreign relations fallout with the West following the Andijon events in 2005. Since then, he has continued work as a researcher specializing projects that attempt to identify the way social and religious groups affect political and security outcomes in the whole region, specifically including violent extremist groups, ethnic conflict, and Central Asian participation in the Syrian conflict. His most recent publications include “The Evolution of the Uzbek Jihad” in Constructing the Uzbek State: Narratives of Post-Soviet Years (2017) and “What Happens When Your Town Becomes an ISIS Recruiting Ground? Lessons from Central Asia about Vulnerability, Resistance, and the Danger of Ignoring Perceived Injustice” (2018). Noah received his M.A. in Russian, Central Asian and Eastern European Studies from Harvard in 2008.