Israeli ambassador to the United States and best-selling author Michael B. Oren will speak Feb. 9 at a President’s Associates Dinner in the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Molly Shi Boren Ballroom.

A reception will be held at 6 p.m. followed by a dinner and Oren’s lecture presented at 6:30 p.m. — both at no cost.

Oren is a contributing writer to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New Republic. His most recent books — “Six Days of War: June 1967 and The Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” — both made the New York Times Best-Sellers Lists.

“Ambassador Oren has a keen understanding of the underlying factors which influence the chance for peace in the Middle East,” President David Boren said.

Oren is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia universities, and has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense as well as from the British and Canadian governments. He has served as the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, according to a press release.

According to the release, Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s after being raised in New Jersey. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, with the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, as a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War and as an Israel Defense Forces spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009.

Oren acted as an Israeli Emissary to Jewish individuals denied emigration in the Soviet Union, as an adviser to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations and as the government’s director of Inter-Religious Affairs, according to a press release.

Dinner seating is available by reservation for OU students, faculty and staff, with limited overflow seating available to the public. For reservations and information, call the OU Office of Special Events at 405-325-3784.