Salah Jmor, faculty member of Kent State’s Center for International and Comparative Programs (CICP) based in Geneva, Switzerland, was killed June 28 in Baghdad.

Jmor was shot in the head while stopped by a U.S. convoy. A spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry declined to give details about who fired the gun or where it came from, according to CNN.com.

The Iraqi and Swiss citizen had been part of the university’s program since 1998. He was hired as an international business professor by current director Mark Rubin.

“The last time I talked to him was in late April, and he was being considered for being the Minister of Commerce in Iraq,” said Mark Rubin, director of the CICP. “He turned it down to stay in Switzerland with his family, but he felt like it was his duty to help the Iraqi people.”

Jmor, being of Kurdish descent, went to Switzerland as a refugee in 1980. He had been involved with the political rule of Kurdistan by Iraq’s new administration. He was also a part of the Swiss government as a member of the Social-Democrat Party in Geneva. Jmor was also dean of the Global Trade Institute, an organization studying globalization in Geneva.

Jmor was a favorite of students.

“He was my favorite teacher there,” senior German translation major Kelly Jernigan said. “His teaching methods were so revolutionary. Most teachers would just lecture, but he would bring meaning into all the cases that we studied.”

Switzerland has asked the United States embassy in Iraq, the State Department and the Pentagon for more information about the death.

Contact general assignment reporter Deanna Stevens at [email protected].