Gulf Leader Returns to Utah Campus Three Decades Later to Shape Regional Dialogue

Jasem Mohamed AlBudaiwi walked out of the University of Utah in 1991 with a degree. Thirty-five years later, he will walk back in as the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional body representing six nations across the Arabian Peninsula, to deliver the keynote address at the university’s inaugural Gulf States Forum.

The forum takes place on September 17, 2026, beginning at 9 a.m. It is a full-day event organized around diplomacy, economic diversification, natural resources, and innovation across the Arabian Peninsula and its ties to the United States. Keynote addresses, panel discussions, and guest lectures will carry the day before it closes with the Global U Alumni Impact Dinner, where AlBudaiwi will receive the inaugural Global U Alumni Impact Award, a recognition tied directly to the international career he has built since graduating.

The event grows out of a partnership between the University of Utah Office for Global Engagement and the Middle East Center, both of which have worked to build spaces where academic researchers, government officials, industry leaders, and community members can examine shared challenges in the Gulf region together. The day’s programming reflects that mix, moving from broad regional analysis to specific policy questions and back again.

The intellectual core of the forum rests on a carefully assembled group of scholars. Bader Mousa Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University and historian of the modern Middle East, and Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum in Washington, D.C., will join a panel discussion moderated by Michael Christopher Low, director of the University of Utah’s Middle East Center and an associate professor of history. Their conversation will cover geopolitics, public policy, culture, and reform dynamics across the Arabian Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, will deliver a guest lecture titled “U.S.-Gulf Relations after the Iran War: what (and where) next?” His work traces the shifting position of Persian Gulf states in the global order and the nonmilitary security challenges now emerging across the region. A roundtable discussion will follow, drawing in Andrew Leber, an assistant professor of political science at Tulane University whose research examines policymaking and media ecosystems in non-democracies, and Karen Young, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a political economist focused on Gulf energy and broader Middle Eastern economies.

The evening dinner carries its own purpose beyond honoring AlBudaiwi. Tickets are priced at $60 per guest, with a discounted rate of $15 for current University of Utah students. All proceeds will support the University of Utah International Students Emergency Fund, which provides financial assistance to international students facing unexpected hardship.

Apart from the dinner, all forum events are free and open to the public. Registration is required and space is limited.

The University of Utah’s Middle East Center has operated for more than sixty years as a scholarly hub for regional study. It brings together more than 30 faculty affiliates from across campus to support research, teaching, public events, and community outreach, and it supports language learning in Arabic and Persian alongside an interdisciplinary Middle East track within the International and Area Studies program.

For more information and to register, visit https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/university-of-utah-hosts-inaugural-gulf-states-forum-alumni-impact-dinner/

Whether the forum becomes an annual fixture, and how its conversations shape the university’s engagement with the Gulf region in the years ahead, remains an open question, one that September 17 will begin to answer.