Music journalist Lorraine Ali will present a lecture titled “Music and the World Outside of MTV” at 7 p.m. Monday in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

Ali is currently a music critic for Newsweek and was a senior critic for Rolling Stone. She has also written music columns for Mademoiselle and the Los Angeles Times, and was voted Music Journalist of the Year in 1997.

Ali, who is Iraqi-American, has been outspoken about the looming war with Iraq. She has family in Baghdad, and in a previous interview with the Daily, described the conditions in the country under United States-imposed sanctions and Saddam Hussein’s rule.

“I can tell you, for the Iraqi-Americans it is just heartbreaking,” Ali said. “We don’t particularly like Saddam either, but America has punished the people just as much at this point.

“It’s not like you’ve got people living in mud huts there — you’ve got educated people who have lived fairly good lives but now have been reduced to squalor partly because of Saddam, but largely in the last 10 years due to [U.S.] sanctions.”

The lecture is free and open to the public. A profile on Ali is available on our Web edition at iowastatedaily.com.

—Megan Hinds