On January 26, 2009, CIRS began its Spring semester Faculty Distinguished Lecture Series with a talk by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the foremost scholars of Islamic, Religious and Comparative Studies in the world. He was introduced to the audience by Mohammed Al Sudairi, SFS-Qatar sophomore and President of the Blue and Gray theater club.

Nasr's lecture, held at the Al Sharq hotel in Doha, outlined daily environmental struggles within an elaborate frame of spiritual Islam. This subject, Nasr emphasized, "is of gravest importance" because people have resorted to covering up the problem without actually finding a solution. Environmental destruction however, "will not be solved by cosmetics," but "requires a change in our way of life."