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Program 2012

   THE JOHN A. MAXWELL SCHOLAR-DIPLOMAT PROGRAM

         Arab Spring or American Autumn? The Changing Role of the United States in the Middle East

  Participants:

• Sarah Adams, University of Charleston
• Kwame Agyenim-Boateng, West Virginia Wesleyan College
• Gerald Beller, West Virginia State University
• Lisa DeFrank-Cole, West Virginia University
• Hannah Geffert, Shepherd University
• Max Guirguis, Shepherd University
• Gerald Hough, New River Community & Technical College
• Sally Howard, Concord University
• Majed Khader, Marshall University
• William Mallory, West Virginia Wesleyan College
• T. J. Park, West Virginia State University
• Patricia Ryan, Fairmont State University

Program Coordinators:

• Jack Hammersmith, FACDIS Director, West Virginia University
• Gretchen Peterec, FACDIS Assistant Director, West Virginia University                              

WEDNESDAY, April 11

 FRIDAY, April 13  

GUIDE TO SPEAKERS

Elliott Abrams
Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign RelationsElliott Abrams served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor in the Administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House. Mr. Abrams was educated at Harvard College, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. After serving on the staffs of Senators Henry M. Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan, he was an Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration and received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award from Secretary George P. Shultz. Mr. Abrams was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., from 1996 until joining the White House staff. He was a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001, and Chairman of the Commission in the latter year. Mr. Abrams is currently a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which directs the activities of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He teaches U.S. foreign policy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Mr. Abrams joined the Bush Administration in June, 2001 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organizations. From December 2002 to February 2005, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. He served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy from February 2005 to January 2009, and in that capacity supervised both the Near East and North African Affairs, and the Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organizations directorates of the NSC.

Jon B. Alterman
Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy and Director, Middle East Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Prior to joining CSIS in 2002, Alterman 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 is a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and served as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission). In addition to his policy work, he teaches Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the George Washington University. 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 was an award-winning teacher at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in history. He also worked as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY), responsible for foreign policy and defense. Alterman has lectured in more than 30 countries on subjects related to the Middle East and U.S. policy toward the region. He is the author or coauthor of four books on the Middle East and the editor of two more. In addition to his academic work, he is sought out as a consultant to business and government and is a frequent commentator in print, on radio, and on television. His opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other major publications. He is on the Board of Advisory Editors of the Middle East Journal, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Arab Media and Society, and a former international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is now a life member. He received his A.B. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Tarek Amri
Counselor - Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Tunisia
Tarek Amri received his law degree in 1990, and over the following twelve years, in addition to his professional career, has pursued graduate studies in law, diplomacy, and international policy at the University of Tunis, the International Institute of Public Administration in Paris, the Institute of European Studies, and the Graduate School of National Defense Studies, also in Paris. He has served as the head of the legal department, also working on exportation issues for a private firm, and then in 1991 began working for the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the early 1990s he worked on Moroccan relations and on issues relating to the Arab Maghreb Union. Between 1994 and 2000 he served as chief secretary and then chief counselor for the Tunisian Embassy in Sénégal. He returned to Tunis for a three-year cabinet position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2003 to 2008 he was chief counselor at the Tunisian Embassy in Japan. This experience then served him as adjunct director of the Asian and American affairs section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A year ago he was appointed as the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the provisional Tunisian government, and since September has been serving as the deputy chief of mission of the Tunisian Embassy in Washington.

Thomas Carothers
Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Thomas Carothers is the founder and director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program, which analyzes the state of democracy in the world and the efforts by the United States and other countries to promote democracy. He also oversees the Carnegie Endowment’s European activities, including Carnegie Europe in Brussels. Carothers is a leading authority on democracy promotion and democratization worldwide as well as an expert on U.S. foreign policy generally. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many public and private organizations and carried out extensive field research on democracy-building efforts around the world. In addition, he has broad experience in matters dealing with development aid, human rights, rule of law, and civil society development. He is the author or editor of eight critically acclaimed books on democracy promotion, as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers, including Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies (Carnegie, 2006) and Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge (Carnegie, 2006). He is a senior research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and has also taught at the Central European University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He received an A.B. from Harvard College, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Stephen R. Grand
Director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, Saban Center and Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Before coming to Brookings, Grand was director of the Middle East Strategy Group at the Aspen Institute. Prior to that, Grand served as adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School and was a scholar-in-residence at American University in Washington, D.C. From 2002 to 2003, he was an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also served as the director of programs at the German Marshall Fund, and a professional staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Dr. Grand received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and his B.A. from the University of Virginia.

Mohamed Raed Hergli
Counselor - Congressional Affairs, Embassy of Tunisia
Mr. Mohamed Raed Hergli joined the Tunisian Foreign Service in 2004. Since August 2007, he has been serving as the Congressional Counselor at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Prior to his current position, he was Desk Officer at the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of the UN General Assembly’s 4th Committee as well as of Law of the Sea matters. He majored in Accounting and holds a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Tunis and a Master’s in Diplomacy from the University of Malta. He holds two Certificate Degrees respectively in International Business Management and Project Management from Georgetown University. In parallel with serving at the Ministry in Tunis, Mr. Hergli taught Electronic Commerce at the University of Manouba in Tunisia. He is married and has a son.

Nabeel Khoury
Director, Near East South Asia Office, Bureau of Political Analysis (INR), United States Department of State
Previously, from 2007-08, Nabeel Khoury was the Department of State Chair at the U.S. Marine War College at Quantico. A Foreign Service Officer since 1987, Dr Khoury has served most recently as Deputy Chief of Mission in Yemen (2004-07), Deputy Director of the Media Outreach Centre in London (2002-04), and Consul General in Morocco (1994-97). In 2003, during the Iraq war, he served as Department spokesperson at Centcom in Doha and in Baghdad. Before his Foreign Service career, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the College Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and earlier, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Jordan, Amman. During his years in academe, Dr. Khoury published a number of articles in The Middle East Journal, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and The International Journal of Middle East Studies on issues of leadership and development in the Arab world.

Thomas W. Lippman
Scholar, Middle East Institute
Thomas W. Lippman, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, and former senior fellow for Middle East affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a Washington-based author and journalist who has written about Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than three decades, specializing in Saudi Arabia, U.S.- Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post, and also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Throughout the 1990s, he covered foreign policy and national security for the Post, traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. He has been a frequent visitor to Saudi Arabia throughout the past decade. Lippman is the author of numerous magazine articles, book reviews and op-ed columns about Mideast affairs, and of six books about the Middle East and U.S. diplomacy: Understanding Islam (1982, 3rd revised edition 2002); Egypt After Nasser (1989); Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (2000); Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (2004); Arabian Knight: Col. Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East (2008); and his latest, Saudi Arabia on the Edge, published in January 2012. He is also a consultant on regional affairs to U.S. government agencies, including the Air Force Special Operations Command.

Marc Lynch
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs; Director, Institute for Middle East Studies; and Director, Project on Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University
In addition to his responsibilities at George Washington University, Marc Lynch is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and edits the Middle East Channel for ForeignPolicy.com. Lynch graduated from Duke University (BA), and received his MA and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He publishes frequently on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arab media and information technology, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Islamist movements. He also works on public diplomacy and strategic communications. His book Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today, was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. His most recent book, The Arab Uprising: the Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East, released last month, has been included in Foreign Policy’s "Books to Read in 2012" list. He has received substantial grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute for Peace, and the U.S. Department of Education. Lynch began writing his influential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark under a pseudonym in 2002, and began blogging under his own name in the spring of 2005. Despite (or perhaps because of) the quirky name, Abu Aardvark gained a wide following among Middle East policy professionals, journalists, and academics. In 2009, Abu Aardvark moved to ForeignPolicy.com, and in 2010 Lynch helped to launch and edit its Middle East Channel.

David B. Ottaway
Senior Scholar, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
David B. Ottaway received a B.A. from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1962 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1972. He worked 35 years for The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe and later as a national security and investigative reporter in Washington before retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards for his reporting at home and abroad and was twice nominated a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ottaway was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1979-80 and again in 2005-06, and is currently a Senior Scholar there. His most recent book, published in November 2008, was The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America’s Tangled Relationship with Saudi Arabia. He is currently working on a book regarding the changes underway in the Arab world.

David Pollock
Kaufman Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
David Pollock is the Kaufman fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on the political dynamics of Middle Eastern countries. Previously, he served as senior advisor for the Broader Middle East at the State Department, a post he assumed in 2002. In that capacity, he provided policy advice on issues of democracy and reform in the region, with a focus on women's rights. He also helped launch the department's $15 million Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative and the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council, working directly with advocates across the Middle East. From 1996 to 2001, Dr. Pollock served in several other State Department policy advisory positions covering South Asia and the Middle East, including four years as regional expert on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff. Previously, he was chief of Near East/South Asia/Africa research at the U.S. Information Agency, where he supervised the government's study of public opinion, elite attitudes, and media content across the three regions. In 1995-1996, he was a scholar-in-residence at The Washington Institute, where he authored the widely read Policy Paper The 'Arab Street'? Public Opinion in the Arab World. Dr. Pollock has served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University and an assistant professor at George Washington University. He has traveled widely in the Middle East and maintains a large network of contacts in government, academia, and business throughout the region. Dr. Pollock received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Harvard College.