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Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have lost his shot at the French presidency, but after months of legal troubles, including his two-day stint in a French jail this week, there are still people who want to hear the former International Monetary Fund director speak about things other than his sex life. He's doing it quietly for the most part, but since he returned to France last September, Strauss-Kahn has started rebuilding his public persona. He even has two speaking engagements booked next month. Clearly Strauss-Kahn still wants to have a say in global economic issues, and, amazingly, people are willing to listen and take him seriously. But whom?
The Cambridge Union Society, for one. The private Cambridge club hosts regular debates and speeches from a range of figures. Last March it heard a rare address from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and in 2007 Col. Muammar Qaddafi addressed the club via satellite, "issu[ing] a defiant call for Western powers to stay out of Africa," according to the club's site. On its schedule, where Strauss-Kahn is booked March 9, the club describes him as follows: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a French economist, lawyer and politician. He served as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2007 until his resignation in 2011. He was previously a professor of economics at the Sciences PO and the French Minister of Economy and Finance." That's all true, but the fact that the description omits Strauss-Kahn's recent, um, troubles is either generous or disingenuous, depending one one's view of his arrest for sexual assault in New York and the two days he just spent in a French jail while being questioned in an investigation into a prostitution ring.