CANTON – An expert on Turkish current events who teaches at St. Lawrence University has been invited to speak before a House Congressional panel on the state of affairs in Turkey.

Howard L. Eissenstat, assistant professor of history, will speak before a bi-partisan Congressional panel on human rights and Turkish law at the House of Representatives on March 27.

As an expert on Turkish affairs, Eissenstat routinely writes for Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now blog and has been featured over the last year in several national publications and broadcasts, including The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Associated Press, and Public Radio International’s The World.

For more than a year, Turkey has seen a rash of civil protests due to economic strife and political repression.

Most recently, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blocked the social media network Twitter throughout the country.

Eissenstat was invited to the Capitol by the co-chairs of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Congressmen Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Frank Wolf (R-Penn.). He will attend as one of three panelists at the briefing, along with Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institute and Aaron Lobel of American Media Abroad.