Speaker Biographies

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian dissident, democracy activist, and blogger. He was born and raised in Syria, but completed his undergraduate studies in the United States. He returned to his home-country in September 1994 and lived there until he and his family were forced into exile on September 7, 2005 on account of his growing criticism of his country's president and his grassroots activism meant to improve inter-communal relations in the country. In the interim, Ammar authored a number of literary works in English, including a volume of poetry, "The Voidman," and a novel, "Menstruation," which was published in 2001 and has been translated into several languages since. In the period between June 2004 and March 2006, Ammar also served, respectively, as a visiting fellow and non-resident fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Currently, Ammar serves as the director of the Tharwa Foundation, a U.S.-based organization dedicated to improving relations between the different ethnic communities in the Broader Middle East and North Africa. The Foundation was established as a continuation of Ammar's earlier work in Syria.  Ammar received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin.

Jon Alterman is director and senior fellow of the CSIS Middle East Program. Prior to joining CSIS, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. He served as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group and is a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before entering government, he was a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 1993 to 1997, Alterman taught at Harvard. He also worked as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY), responsible for foreign policy and defense. He is the author or coauthor of three books on the Middle East and the editor of a fourth. In addition to his academic work, he is a frequent commentator in print, on radio, and on television. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Middle East Journal and Transnational Broadcasting Studies and is a former International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Alterman received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

William C. Banks is a Professor of Law and Public Administration and Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University. He is recognized internationally as an expert in constitutional law, national security law, and counterterrorism. Banks co-wrote the leading text in the field. National Security Law was first published in 1990 and is now in its fourth edition. Banks and his co-authors published Counterterrorism Law in 2007 to help define the emerging field of counterterrorism law.  Banks is also the author of numerous other books, book chapters, and articles including Constitutional Law: Structure and Rights in Our Federal System, Fifth Edition, "The Death of FISA,” “Legal Sanctuaries and Predator Strikes in the War on Terror,” and "Targeted Killing and Assassination: The U.S. Legal Framework." Banks joined the faculty of the Syracuse University College of Law in 1978. Since 1998, he also has been a Professor of Public Administration in SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He was named the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence in 1998, and he became the founding director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University in 2003.

Hany El Banna is co-founder and President of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, the Ibn Khaldun Award for Excellence in Promoting Understanding between Global Cultures and Faiths (UK), and a service award from the Egyptian Medical Syndicate. In 2005 he received the Kashmiri and Pakistani Professional Association Award, in 2006 he was awarded the Asian Jewel Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2007, the UK Muslim Power 100 gave him their lifetime achievement award. He is a member of the Three Faiths Forum (UK), the West-Islamic World Dialogue Council of 100 Leaders group. Dr El Banna is a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee (UK) and a member of The Advisory Group to the International Department of The Charity Commission (UK). He initiated the Humanitarian Forum, which seeks to build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim-run NGOs. Born in Egypt, Dr El Banna completed his MBBCH Medicine at Al Azhar University, Cairo, where he also obtained a Diploma in Islamic Studies in 1976. He was awarded the Hamilton Bailey Prize for Pathology 1981 and went on to complete his medical training to become a Doctor of Medicine 1991.

Anthony Barnett is the founder of openDemocracy.net. A social entrepreneur of wide experience, Anthony helped launch Charter 88 in 1988 and was its first Director. Generating widespread support he turned it into a movement for the democratic reform of Britain (at the end of the 90s the Telegraph described it as the UK's "most influential pressure group of the decade"). Anthony is also a writer and journalist. He is the author of Iron Britannia; Soviet Freedom and This Time; and co-author and editor of among other books, Aftermath: the Struggle of Vietnam and Cambodia; Power and the Throne, Town and Country and a considerable range of articles and pamphlets covering politics and culture including the television film, England's Henry Moore. He writes regularly for openDemocracy and is currently editing its British blog OurKingdom and launched its dedicated coverage of democracy and terrorism after the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004.

Frederick Barton is a senior adviser in the CSIS International Security Program and codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project. A member of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power and a supporting expert to the Iraq Study Group and the Task Force on the United Nations, Barton is a regular writer, commentator, and contributor to global public discussions. For the past five years, he was also a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he was the Frederick H. Schultz Professor of Economic Policy and lecturer on public and international affairs. His work is informed by 12 years of experience in nearly 30 global hot spots, including serving as UN deputy high commissioner for refugees in Geneva (1999–2001) and as the first director of the Office of Transition Initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development (1994–1999). A graduate of Harvard College (1971), Barton earned his M.B.A. from Boston University (1982), with an emphasis on public management, and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Wheaton College of Massachusetts (2001).

Daniel Benjamin is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. His scholarly interests include American foreign policy, European affairs, terrorism, the Middle East and South Asia. Prior to joining Brookings, Benjamin spent six years as a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1994 to 1999, Daniel Benjamin served on the National Security Council staff. As director for transnational threats in 1998-1999, he was responsible for keeping the President and the National Security Advisor briefed and prepared with policy options regarding terrorism and for helping manage interagency counterterrorism coordination. From 1994-1997, he served as foreign policy speechwriter and special assistant to President Clinton. Together with Steven Simon, Daniel Benjamin has written two books, The Age of Sacred Terror and The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and A Strategy for Getting it Right. Daniel Benjamin holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Philip Bennett is the managing editor at The Washington Post. As the second-ranking editor at The Post, Bennett supervises more than eight hundred journalists in a newsroom that produces one of the country’s leading daily newspapers and contributes to washingtonpost.com, a web site with a large national and international audience. Before his appointment as managing editor in 2005, Bennett was The Post’s assistant managing editor for foreign news. He was responsible for the newspaper’s 20 international bureaus. Under his direction, The Post’s foreign staff won many awards, including two Pulitzer prizes for international reporting, most recently for coverage of the war in Iraq. Bennett joined The Post in 1997 as a deputy national editor for coverage of national security, defense, and foreign policy. He came to the paper from the Boston Globe, where he was a foreign correspondent in Latin America and, later, the Globe’s foreign editor. He has also written for numerous magazines. He started in journalism as a reporter for The Lima Times in Peru. His first work for The Washington Post was as a stringer from Peru in 1982. Bennett grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated with a degree in history from Harvard.

Nadia Bilbassy-Charters is the Senior Diplomatic Correspondent for Al Arabiya TV based in Washington DC. Ms. Bilbassy covers the White House and the State Department for the Dubai based television channel. Prior to moving to Washington, she was embedded with the 101st Marines Divison in Kuwait on the push to Baghdad in March 2003. From 1997 to 2003, Bilbassy was the Bureau Chief for MBC TV, Middle East Broadcasting Centre based in Nairobi, Kenya. She covered most of Africa’s conflicts. She has traveled extensively in southern Sudan with the SPLA, The Sudan People’s Liberation Army. She reported regularly from war torn areas like the DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi. She has been in and out of Mogadishu during her six year tenure in Africa. Ms. Bilbassy was based in Sri Lanka between 1990-1994, covering the country’s civil war for The Independent, and later for IPS. She started her career as a correspondent for Agence France-Presse in 1987, where she covered the first Palestinian Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza. Ms. Bilbassy has a B.A. in humanities from Bradford University, UK and a master's degree in journalism from City University in London.       

Reginald K. Brack is former chairman and chief executive officer of Time Inc. Mr. Brack was named chief executive officer of the publishing company in December 1986 and served as both chairman and chief executive officer until August 1994 and chairman until 1997. Mr. Brack was CEO of Time Inc.'s Books Group from August 1984 until December 1986, when he was named CEO of the Magazine Company. He also was chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Time-Life Books Inc. from November 1982 to October 1986. From May 1980 until November 1982, he served as the founding publisher of Discover, Time Inc.'s magazine of science and technology. Mr. Brack was associate publisher of Time magazine from 1976 to 1980 and was chief operating officer of the magazine worldwide. He held the positions of Time's worldwide advertising sales director (1974-1976) and director of Time International (1971-1974). Mr. Brack is former chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Urban League, and a trustee of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. Born on August 26, 1937 and raised in Dallas, Texas, Mr. Brack received a B.S. degree from Washington and Lee University in 1959.

Claude Bruderlein is the Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, an international research and policy program based at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has been engaged in international humanitarian protection since 1985. He then served with the International Committee of the Red Cross as a delegate in Iran, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Yemen. In 1996, he joined the United Nations in New York as Special Advisor on Humanitarian Affairs. He worked particularly on humanitarian access in Afghanistan and North Korea. In September 2003, he was appointed as a member of the Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of the United Nations Personnel in Iraq. His research interests include international humanitarian law, humanitarian protection, security management, and human security. Mr. Bruderlein obtained a B.A. in economics and political science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, a law degree from the University of Geneva Law School, and a Master's degree in Law from Harvard Law School.

Michael Gallagher lost his only son, Aiden, in the largest terrorist bombing during the 30 year Troubles in Northern Ireland.  The attack took place in Omagh, County Tyrone on August 15, 1998, just four months before the Good Friday agreement was signed.  Since the deadly bombing, which killed 29 people, Gallagher has been a staunch advocate of promoting peace.  Working with a support group of those who also lost loved ones, Gallagher has demanded legal repercussions against the attack’s perpetrators, Real IRA. He attended two international conferences for victims of terrorism in Spain and Colombia, and works with his wife and two daughters to preserve the memory of his son and to help other victims of terrorism.

John Hamre was elected president and CEO of CSIS in January 2000. Before joining CSIS, he served as the 26th U.S. deputy secretary of defense. Prior to holding that position, he was under secretary of defense (comptroller) from 1993 to 1997. As comptroller, Hamre was the principal assistant to the secretary of defense for the preparation, presentation, and execution of the defense budget and management improvement programs. Before serving in the Department of Defense, Hamre worked for 10 years as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. From 1978 to 1984, Hamre served in the Congressional Budget Office, where he became its deputy assistant director for national security and international affairs. Hamre received his Ph.D., with distinction, in 1978 from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, where his studies focused on international politics and economics and U.S. foreign policy. In 1972, he received a B.A., with high distinction, from Augustana College, emphasizing political science and economics. The following year he studied as a Rockefeller Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

Steven Heydemann serves as associate vice president of the Jennings Randolph Fellowship program and as special advisor to the Muslim World Initiative in the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention.  In December, he will become USIP's Vice President for Grants and Fellows. Heydemann is a political scientist whose research and teaching focus on the comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East.  His interests include authoritarian governance, economic development, social policy, political and economic reform, and civil society. In addition, he is involved in research on the relationship between institutions and economic development, and on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. From 2003-2007, Heydemann worked as director of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. Previously, he served as program director at the Social Science Research Council (1990-1997), where he ran the Council’s program on International Peace and Security and its program on the Near and Middle East. Heydemann completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

David Heyman is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Homeland Security Program and an adjunct professor in security studies at Georgetown University. Heyman leads the Center’s research and program activities in homeland security, focusing on developing the strategies and policies to help build and transform U.S. federal, state, local, and private-sector homeland security institutions. He is an expert on terrorism, critical infrastructure protection, bioterrorism, and risk-based security. Most recently, he was the principal architect of, and helped run, “Steadfast Resolve,” a cabinet-level tabletop exercise that examined critical decision making at the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council during the next potential terrorist attack.  Before joining CSIS, Heyman served in a number of government positions, including as a senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on national security and international affairs. Prior to that, he was the head of international operations for a private-sector software/systems engineering firm developing supply-chain management systems for Fortune 100 firms. He has worked in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.

Victoria Holt is a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, bringing policy and political expertise from her professional experience within the State Department, Congress, and the NGO field.  Working with the Future of Peace Operations program, Holt evaluates and helps to advance both U.S. policy and international capacity for peace operations. The program explores both peacekeeping, the provision of temporary, post-conflict security and stability by internationally-mandated forces, and peacebuilding, international efforts, including post-conflict reconstruction, that help war-torn societies sustain peace and build the rule of law. She previously served as Senior Policy Advisor at the State Department (Legislative Affairs), focusing on peacekeeping and UN issues. As Executive Director of the Emergency Coalition for U.S. Financial Support of the United Nations, she directed a bipartisan coalition of leading statesmen and non-governmental organizations. With seven years experience on Capitol Hill, Holt has an intricate understanding of the workings of defense and foreign policy issues in government and the public policy arena. She has also worked for other Washington-based policy institutes on international affairs. Holt is a board member of Women in International Security (WIIS). A graduate of the Naval War College, Holt also holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University.

Ashraf al-Khaled, known as the “Groom of Jordan,” lost his father and father-in-law during a deadly suicide bombing attack at his wedding reception in November 2005.  Seventeen people died in the blast, which ripped through the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman.  He and his bride suffered minor injuries.  Since the attack, al-Khaled has spoken out as a victim of terrorism in his home country and in the United States.  He underscores how terrorist groups like al Qaeda continue to manipulate Islam to commit evil.  He questions the use of civilians as targets, asking what the aim of such attacks is. Who are the real targets?

Irene Khan joined Amnesty International as Secretary General in August 2001. The first woman, first Asian, and first Muslim to head the world's largest human rights organization, she has led AI through developments in the wake of September 11, confronting the backlash against human rights; broadening the work of the organization in areas of economic, social and cultural rights; and bringing a strong focus to the issue of women's human rights and violence against women. Prior to joining AI she served with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, including as Deputy Director in the Department of International Protection, Chief of Mission in India, Senior Legal Advisor for Asia and Senior Executive Officer to the High Commissioner. She is a recipient of the Pilkington "Women of the Year" award (2002), the John Owens Distinguished Alumni award (University of Manchester - 2003) and the City of Sydney Peace Prize (2006). She has been voted one of the 100 Most Influential Asians in the UK. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Manchester and was awarded honorary doctorates by Ferris University (Japan), Staffordshire University (UK), Ghent University (Belgium), and the University of London.

Colonel William K. Lietzau is the Commanding Officer of Henderson Hall, U.S. Marine Corps. Formerly, he was the senior legal advisor for the U.S. European Command, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany where he was responsible for U.S. military activities in 91 countries, primarily in Europe and Africa. As a Marine Corps judge advocate, he has served as a prosecutor, defense counsel, and a judge. He has worked in the offices of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense dealing with myriad law of war issues, from anti-personnel landmines to Guantanamo Bay. On behalf of the U.S. Government, Colonel Lietzau has participated in several multilateral treaty negotiations, including the negotiations surrounding the adoption of the Rome Statute. He has also taught international law as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and has published several articles on international, criminal, and constitutional law. His educational background includes degrees from the U.S. Naval Academy, Yale Law School, and the National War College.

Geoff Loane is the current Head of Regional Delegation of the United States and Canada for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In this capacity he oversees ICRC visits to the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and is responsible for day to day working relationships with the United States Government. Mr. Loane has also worked in the Balkans, Middle East and spent more than a decade in the Horn of Africa during the major conflicts there. These include Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda. He has also served as the Head of the Emergency Relief Unit of the ICRC in Geneva. Mr. Loane has published books on the unintended consequences of humanitarian assistance and has conducted extensive field research in assistance operations. He was a senior scholar for the Conflict Prevention Network in Berlin where he prepared a number of research papers for the European Commission. He has organized and managed an emergency roster of personnel on behalf of the Irish government. Mr. Loane has raised his three children in a variety of international settings. He is a graduate of the University of Dublin, Trinity College.

Irshad Manji is a Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy and the internationally best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. The Jakarta Post in Indonesia identifies Irshad as one of three Muslim women making positive change in Islam. In countries that have banned her book, she is reaching readers by posting free translations on her website. Irshad is also creator of the acclaimed PBS documentary, “Faith Without Fear.” It is now being shown in underground screenings throughout the Muslim world. She is joining New York University to direct the Moral Courage Challenge, an effort to develop young leaders who will break silences in their own communities for the sake of a greater good. Irshad puts that principle into practice by spearheading Project Ijtihad. This is an emerging movement of reform-minded Muslims who aim to renew Islam’s tradition of critical thinking, debate, and dissent. Raised in Canada, Irshad was born in Uganda to a mother from Egypt and a father from India.  Irshad holds her B.A. from the University of British Columbia.

William McCants is a Fellow at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. He is an expert on Jihadi ideology and strategy, as well as medieval and modern Islamic thought. Recently, he has consulted on militant Salafism for various branches of the U.S. government and military, translated an important al-Qaeda book on strategy, and directed the Jihadi Ideology Project, which maps the intellectual influence of Jihadi authors. He is currently designing curricula on jihadi-inspired terrorism for the FBI and teaching its new agents. His work has been featured in various media outlets, including the front page of USA Today, CNN's website, NPR's "Morning Edition," the New York Times, the Washington Post, Anderson Cooper 360, and a Zawahiri video. He has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University and has lived in Egypt and Lebanon.

Johanna Mendelson Forman is a senior associate at CSIS, where she works on renewable energy, the Americas, civil-military relations, and post-conflict reconstruction. A former codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, she has written extensively on security-sector reform in conflict states, economic development in postwar societies, the role of the United Nations in peace operations, and energy security. She has served as the director of peace, security, and human rights at the UN Foundation and has held senior positions in the U.S. government at USAID and the Bureau for Humanitarian Response, as well as at the World Bank’s Post Conflict Unit. She was a senior fellow with the Association of the United States Army and a guest scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace. An adviser to the UN Mission in Haiti and holder of adjunct faculty appointments at American University and Georgetown University, Mendelson Forman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the advisory boards of Women in International Security and the Latin American Security Network, RESDAL. She holds a J.D. from Washington College of Law at American University, a Ph.D. in Latin American history from Washington University, St. Louis, and a master’s of international affairs, with a certificate of Latin America studies, from Columbia University in New York. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Sarah Mendelson is the director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at CSIS and a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program. Before joining CSIS, Mendelson taught international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. From 1997 to 2000, she directed a collaborative study, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, evaluating the impact of Western democracy assistance to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. From 1995 to 1998, she was an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Albany, and from 1997 to 1998, she was a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has been a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and Princeton University’s Center of International Studies. Mendelson serves on the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editorial board of International Security. She is the author of Barracks and Brothels: Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking in the Balkans and Changing Course: Ideas, Politics and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mendelson received her B.A. in history from Yale University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1993.

Aryeh Neier is the President of the Open Society Institute. Prior to joining the Institute in 1993, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. Before that, he spent 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including eight years as national Executive Director. Neier has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University for more than a dozen years. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has published in periodicals such as the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, and Foreign Policy.  Neier has contributed more than 150 op-ed articles in newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune, and articles that have appeared in newspapers in many countries.  Author of six books, he has also contributed chapters to more than 20 others. Neier, a naturalized American, was born in Nazi Germany and became a refugee at an early age. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award and the International Bar Association’s Rule of Law Award.

Salameh Nematt has over 20 years experience in economic and political reporting, research and analysis of developments in the broader Middle East, Europe, and the United States, including extensive work on Arab-Israeli political, economic, security and human rights issues, and in-depth reporting on conflicts throughout the Middle East, the Gulf, and North Africa. As Washington Bureau Chief for Al Hayat International Arab daily for the past four years (2003-2007), his work focused on reporting on and analyzing U.S. foreign policy, including issues related to the war in Iraq, the global war on terrorism, the U.S. drive for democratization in the broader Middle East, and issues related to U.S. military and security strategies in the region. He has also written extensively on regional and global energy issues and their economic and political implications. Prior to his work in Washington, Nematt served in London for nearly two years (2002-2003) as Managing Editor for Al Hayat – LBC, a  partnership between the two news organizations. Responsibilities included recruiting staff, designing and implementing the editorial plan and strategy for the news integration venture between the two entities.

Sammy Nganga Ngatiri is a Kenyan citizen and victim of the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. After completing his secondary education, Ngatiri has worked for the Kenya Commercial Bank and as a private businessman.  During the bombing, Ngatiri was renting an office at Ufundi Co-operative House next to the embassy. Since the attack, he has experienced little joy from cheating death so narrowly. However, he has dedicated himself to educating the world about the impact of terrorism on civilian targets worldwide. He notes that the fight against terrorism starts with the individual.

Nadia Oweidat is a Research Associate at the RAND Corporation. Since joining RAND, Ms. Oweidat has researched and written about Islamic extremism and counterterrorism strategies, the ideological evolution of al-Qaeda from 1984-1996, Salafist jihadi networks, jihadi strategies in Iraq, Iranian ascendancy in the Arab world, radicalization of Muslim youth, and democracy initiatives in Egypt. Ms. Oweidat, who was born and raised in Jordan, immigrated to the United States in 1999. Before joining RAND, Ms. Oweidat worked with the law firm of Motley Rice, LLC, supporting a number of cases to expose the financiers of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. She has also worked with a government contractor to help develop software used to familiarize government agents with the Arabic language and culture as well as Muslim beliefs and practices. She is fluent in Arabic and English and proficient in French. Ms. Oweidat has a B.A. from the University of Jordan in Arabic and English languages, and an M.A. with two honors from the University of Wyoming in International Studies with a concentration on the Middle East.

Thomas J. Pritzker is Chairman and CEO of Global Hyatt Corporation and Marmon Group, Inc. He is also Chairman and CEO of The Pritzker Organization, a family merchant bank. Pritzker is on the Board of Directors of Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD. and Trans Union, a leading global provider of credit information and tools for credit decision making. He is also a founding member and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bay City Capital, LLC, a merchant bank specializing in life sciences. He is a member of The Business Council, a national organization of CEO’s. Outside of business, Pritzker is Chairman of the Board of the Art Institute of Chicago and a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago. He has also organized the Pritzker Neurospsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium. This Consortium involves researchers from Stanford, UC Irvine, UC Davis, and University of Michigan. It is a collaborative effort to do research into genetic basis of psychiatric disorders. Born and raised in Chicago where he currently resides, he holds a B.A. from Claremont McKenna and a MBA and J.D. degree from the University of Chicago. Pritzker is also an Honorary Professor of History at Sichuan University in China.

Louise Richardson is the Executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Richardson is also a senior lecturer in government at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. From 1989 to 2001, she was assistant professor and then associate professor of government at Harvard, specializing in international security. For eight years, Richardson was head tutor (director of undergraduate studies) of the Harvard government department. Richardson is the author of What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat. She has also published a number of journal articles, book chapters, and reviews on the subject of terrorism. Richardson's current research projects involve a study of patterns of terrorist violence and a study on counterterrorism lessons to be derived from earlier experiences with terrorism. Richardson received a bachelor's degree in history from Trinity College, Dublin. She earned master's degrees in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles and Harvard and in history from Trinity College, Dublin, and a doctoral degree in government from Harvard University.

Kathleen Ridolfo is a regional analyst covering Iraq for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL.) Over the past five years, Ridolfo has covered political, economic, and social developments in Iraq including the emergence of insurgent groups extensively for the weekly RFE/RL Iraq Report and daily RFE/RL Newsline. Before joining RFE/RL, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, she served as Director of Programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington. From 1998-2000, Ridolfo worked as a consultant for several Palestinian NGOs and companies in the West Bank, and as Foreign Relations Officer at the Arab Thought Forum in Jerusalem. She holds a B.A. in History and Political Science from the University of New Hampshire and attended the M.A. in Arab Studies program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Azamat Sabanov is the son of a former headmaster of School Number One in Beslan, in Russia's North Caucasus, where terrorists took 1000 children and their parents hostage in a three day seige in September 2004. His father and over 300 others perished following the storming of the school by the Russian authorities. Most of the victims were children. Since the attack, he has become a critic of the Russian Federation's emergency response approach, presenting his case as part of delegations from Beslan to President Vladimir Putin and others. Sabanov has also been involved in managing the distribution of humanitarian assistance to the citizens of Beslan in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Oussama Safa is the General Director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, a public policy think tank based in Beirut specializing in the development and implementation of democracy, good governance, and anti-corruption programs. Mr. Safa works on security sector reform and conflict resolution and was Adviser to the secretariat of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders, where he co-lead a project on Christian-Muslim dialogue. Until 2004 he lived in Rabat, Morocco where he launched and managed community peacebuilding programs, labor mediation initiatives, and alternative dispute resolution programs with the Moroccan Ministry of Justice. He was a senior trainer and founding member of the executive committee of the Lebanon Conflict Resolution Network (LCRN). Mr. Safa has observed multiple legislative elections in Lebanon and Yemen and was part of earlier efforts to found the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections. In 1998 he was founding president of Lebanon’s Anti-Corruption Association, La Fassad. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science and international relations from the American University of Beirut and the American University in Washington, DC.

Paul Salem is the Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. He taught at the American University of Beirut between 1987 and 1999. He is the founder and former director (1989-1999) of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, Lebanon’s first policy think tank.  He was also the Director of the Fares Foundation in Lebanon (1999-2006), one of Lebanon’s leading development and charity foundations. He has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, and other Western papers, as well as Arab and Lebanese papers. He is a frequent commentator on Arab and international media. He was on the review board of the UNDP Arab Human Development Report and a primary author in the World Bank’s recent study on Governance in the Arab World. He is a founding member of several advocacy NGOs in Lebanon including the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, the Lebanese Transparency Association, and the Lebanese Conflict Resolution Network. Most recently, he was a member of the National Commission for Electoral Law Reform in Lebanon. Dr. Salem pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies at Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D. in political science from there in 1987.

Ari Sandel is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. His career in the entertainment industry includes television, film, and music videos. Previously, he created and hosted the comedic TV segment, The Traveler, for the FX Channel's, The X Show. He wrote, directed, and hosted the segment for two seasons as he traveled the globe, offering a tongue-in-cheek view of the world's unknown hot spots for the young and hip. He co-wrote and directed the award-winning short film West Bank Story (2005), which premiered at Sundance and has screened at over one hundred film festivals worldwide, winning twenty. His most recent project, Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland (2006), was his feature documentary directorial debut and premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. He is very involved with various political organizations for peace in the Middle East and is currently developing several feature comedies. He holds a B.A. in Media Arts from the University of Arizona in Tucson where he also received a special certificate in Middle Eastern Studies. He went on to earn his Directing M.F.A. from the University of Southern California's school of Cinema-Television.

Teresita Schaffer is the director of the South Asia Program at CSIS. She came to CSIS in August 1998 after a 30-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. She devoted most of her career to international economic issues and to South Asia, on which she was one of the State Department’s principal experts. From 1989 to 1992, she served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, at that time the senior South Asia position in the department; from 1992 to 1995, she was the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka; and from 1995 to 1997, she served as director of the Foreign Service Institute. Her earlier posts included Tel Aviv, Islamabad, New Delhi, and Dhaka, as well as a tour as director of the Office of International Trade in the State Department. She spent a year as a consultant on business issues relating to South Asia after retiring from the Foreign Service. Schaffer has taught at Georgetown University and American University. She speaks French, Swedish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Hindi, and Urdu, and has studied Bangla and Sinhala.

Brigadier General Mark O. Schissler is responsible for all aspects of developing, coordinating, refining, and assessing the U.S. military and national strategies related to the Global War on Terrorism.  He has served in a variety of operational and staff assignments around the world.  He has flown over 3500 hours in the C-130 Hercules aircraft, including over 150 combat and combat support hours and over 500 hours in combat theater operations.  He has commanded at the squadron, group, and wing levels, including two expeditionary wing command tours.  Brigadier General Schissler also has extensive staff experience on the Air Staff and Joint Staff.  He earned a Master of Arts degree in Human Resource Development from Webster University, a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, and a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies from the University of Saint Thomas.  He was selected as a 1998 National Security Fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Ken Silverstein is the Washington Editor for Harper's Magazine and writes Washington Babylon for Harper's online. His article in the March 2007 issue of the magazine, "Parties of God," examined the rise of Islamic political parties and the implications of that development for American foreign policy. A former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Silverstein has covered such topics as intelligence collaboration between the CIA and controversial foreign governments in Sudan and Libya, political corruption in Washington, and links between American oil companies and repressive foreign governments. His 2004 series "The Politics of Petroleum," co-written with T. Christian Miller, won an Overseas Press Club Award. His stories on ties between the government of Equatorial Guinea and major U.S. companies—including Riggs Bank, ExxonMobil and Marathon Oil—led to the convening of a federal grand jury, and to investigations by the Senate and the Securities and Exchange Commission. His report, co-written with Chuck Neubauer, on a lobbying business opened by Karen Weldon, daughter of former Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, led to an FBI investigation.

Kanishk Tharoor is Editor of terrorism.openDemocracy, the terrorism-focused division of the leading online journal of international affairs. He has written for numerous publications, including the Times of India, The Hindu, The Telegraph (India), and openDemocracy, on issues ranging from regional security and terrorism to literary culture. His work and research in recent years include positions at Human Rights Watch, YaleGlobal Online, the Indian Permanent Mission to the United Nations and a fellowship to study Muslim integration in the Netherlands.  He has represented openDemocracy at conferences in Spain, Egypt, the United Kingdom, and the United States on security and conflict resolution, and has advised the Spanish think-tank Fride on matters of Indian foreign policy. He is also an award-winning writer of fiction, and was recently published in a Penguin anthology of short fiction. He graduated magna cum laude last year from Yale University with degrees in History and Literature.

David Veness is the Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security at the United Nations. He formerly served as Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations in the Metropolitan Police Service in London (1994-2005), which he originally entered as a cadet in 1964. He was on the hostage negotiating team at the Iranian Embassy siege (1980) and led the negotiations at the Libyan Peoples Bureau incident in 1984. He was an instructor and then Director of the Scotland Yard Negotiators Course between 1980 and 1987. Mr. Veness was appointed Commander in 1987 and served with Royalty and Diplomatic Protection until 1990. In 1990, he became Commander Public Order, Territorial Security and Operational Support. He was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Crime, in November 1991, and was promoted to Assistant Commissioner in 1994. He was awarded the Queen's Police Medal in 1994 and the Commander of the British Empire in 2000. He was knighted at the end of 2004. He served as a member of the Service Authorities for the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. Mr. Veness was educated at Raynes Park County Grammar School in south London and Trinity College, Cambridge (Master of Arts and Master of Law).

Karin von Hippel is codirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program. Previously, she was a senior research fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London, and spent several years working for the United Nations and the European Union in Somalia and Kosovo. In 2004 and 2005, she participated in two major studies for the UN—one on UN peacekeeping and the second on the UN humanitarian system. Also in 2004, she was part of a small team funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to investigate the development potential of Somali remittances. In 2002, she advised the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on the role of development cooperation in discovering the root causes of terrorism. Since then, she has participated in numerous conferences and working groups on the subject in Africa, Europe, and North America. She also directed a project on European counterterrorist reforms funded by the MacArthur Foundation and edited the volume Europe Confronts Terrorism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). She was a member of Project Unicorn, a counterterrorism police advisory panel in London. She received her Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics, her M.St. from Oxford University, and her B.A. from Yale University.

Jerry White is co-founder with Ken Rutherford of the Landmine Survivors Network (LSN). While hiking with friends from Hebrew University, Jerusalem in April 1984, he stepped on a land mine. He learnt to walk with a prosthesis following five operations at a Tel Aviv hospital. Before he began the LSN, White had been an activist campaigning against weapons of mass destruction and had been interviewed or published in newspapers and journals such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. He has been Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, an editor for the award-winning publication Risk Report and in the late 1990s served on the Board of Directors of the Amputee Coalition of America. He has testified before the United Nations and the United States Senate. In addition to his degree from Hebrew University, White holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

Sarah Leah Whitson is the Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. Previously, she has worked as an attorney in New York for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She has conducted numerous human rights missions in the Middle East over the past 15 years, including the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Harvard Study Team, and International Study Team missions examining the impact of war and sanctions on the Iraqi civilian population, the International Human Rights Law Group's election-monitoring mission in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq, and a fact-finding mission in Southern Lebanon for Madre. Sarah Leah Whitson has served on the boards of the Armenian Bar Association and the New York chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Christine Wormuth is a senior fellow in the International Security Program at CSIS, where she works on defense and homeland security issues, including emergency response and preparedness challenges, homeland security policy development, defense strategy and resources, and the capabilities and readiness of the U.S. military. In 2007, she served as staff director for the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, also known as “The Jones Commission.” As staff director, she traveled with the commission to Iraq and focused in particular on the readiness of Iraqi police forces. Her other projects include developing recommendations for America on better managing responses to future catastrophes (expected in early 2008) and a study on the future of the National Guard and Reserves. Wormuth has held a variety of jobs in the defense world. She was a principal at DFI Government Services (now DeticaDFI), worked in the Policy Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was a French desk officer during and after the September 11 attacks, and was special assistant to the under secretary for policy. Wormuth received her master's in public policy from the University of Maryland, her bachelor’s degree from Williams College, and is a member of Women in International Security.

John Zogby is a noted Lebanese American political pollster and first senior fellow at The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute. He is known for both his phone polling and interactive, Internet-based polling. Due to his Lebanese Christian heritage, Zogby has made a sideline of polling Arab attitudes toward the United States, particularly in regard to Lebanon. He has taught history and political science at the State University of New York, Utica College, and at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton College. Zogby is a graduate of Le Moyne College and Syracuse University.