Category: Lectures and Briefings

Trita Parsi, President and founder of the National Iranian American Council

Trita Parsi, President and founder of the National Iranian American Council

“A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran”

Dr. Trita Parsi is the President and founder of the National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian American grassroots organization in the US, and is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States. As a foreign policy expert with extensive experience on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations, he has also authored numerous articles on Middle East affairs with publications in the Financial Times, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Nation, The Wall Street Journal, The American Conservative, the Jerusalem Post, and The Forward. He is also a frequent commentator on BBC World News, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, Al Jazeera, C-Span, NPR, MSNBC, and Democracy Now. Dr. Parsi is the recipient of the Grawemeyer 2010 Award for Improving the World Order, and the 2008 Arthur Ross Silver Medallion. He has previously served as an adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. Dr. Parsi was born in Iran, grew up in Sweden, and earned a Master’s Degree in International Relations at Uppsala University, a second Master’s Degree in Economics at Stockholm School of Economics and a PhD in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University SAIS.

Feb 29, 2012 | 0 comments View Post

Roger Cohen, Foreign Editor of the New York Times

Dec 20, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Steven Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations

Steven Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations

Egypt After Tahrir: Military Rule versus Civil Democracy

Steven A. Cook is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Cook is the author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square and Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.

Dr. Cook has published widely in a variety of foreign policy journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, Journal of Democracy, The Weekly Standard, Slate, The New Republic Online, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Survival. Dr. Cook is also a frequent commentator on radio and television. He currently writes the blog, “From the Potomac to the Euphrates.”

Previously, Dr. Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Dr. Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and both an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.

 

Dec 20, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Andrew Selee, Director of Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute

Andrew Selee, Director of Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute

“Mexico and the United States: Security, Trade, Migration, and Beyond”

Andrew Selee is director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, which promotes dialogue and understanding between the United States and Mexico. Dr. Selee is currently an adjunct professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University in the Advanced Academic Programs. He has previously been an adjunct professor of Political Science at George Washington University and a visiting professor at El Colegio de Mexico.

Dr. Selee has published extensively including two of his more recent publications: Mexico’s Democratic Challenges and Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime. Dr. Selee is interviewed frequently in the press, including PBS, CBS, NBC, Fox, NPR, BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and The Economist. He serves on the board of the Mexico-U.S. Fulbright Program, the editorial board the journal Latin American Policy, and is also a contributing editor to the Library of Congress’s Handbook of Latin American Studies. Prior to joining the Wilson Center in 2000, Selee was a congressional staffer and worked for five years in Tijuana, Mexico on migrant youth and community development programs. He has a PhD in Policy Studies from the University of Maryland and an MA in Latin American Studies from UCSD.

Dec 20, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Martin Wolf, Editor and Chief Economics Commentator

Dec 12, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Karen Elliot House, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and former president of the Dow Jones International

Dec 12, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Onno Ruding, former Vice Chairman of Citicorp and Citibank, former Finance Minister of The Netherlands

Onno Ruding, former Vice Chairman of Citicorp and Citibank, former Finance Minister of The Netherlands

Dr. H. Onno Ruding is a Network 20/20 Advisory Council member, the former Director of the IMF

Dec 01, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Eckart Woertz, Visiting Fellow at Princeton University

Eckart Woertz, Visiting Fellow at Princeton University

As a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute, Dr. Eckart Woertz focuses on oil, energy, and sustainability in the Middle East. With extensive experience in banking and finance, he offers extraordinary insight on the political economy of the Middle East, including shifts within the region’s financial markets, energy issues, and social impacts of structural policies. Dr. Woertz has particular expertise in food inflation in the Gulf States as well as their agro-investments abroad.

Dr. Woertz is a regular contributor and commentator to major international and regional newspapers such as the Financial Times, Forbes, Der Spiegel, The National and Gulf News. He also appears regularly on Arabic, English and German speaking news channels like Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg and BBC. Among his many publications, Dr. Woertz predicted a long-term bull market in the precious metal, and also warned in early 2006 of the following stock market crash in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Dr. Woertz has previously held senior positions in financial service companies in Germany and the UAE, amongst them Delbrück & Co one of the oldest German private banks, and also served as the head of the Economics Department at the Gulf Research Center (GRC) in Dubai, which is regarded as the leading think tank of the Gulf region. He holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and a PhD in Economics from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Dec 01, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Tai-Heng Cheng, Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy at the New York Law School

Tai-Heng Cheng, Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy at the New York Law School

“When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession”

Tai-Heng Cheng, Professor at New York Law School and Senior Legal Advisor at Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney LLP, offers “real world” guidance on how to face new global problems in his most recent book, When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession. He also serves as Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy as well as Co-Director of the New York City International Economic Law Working Group.

Professor Cheng is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and serves on the Executive Council of American Society of International Law, as well as the Executive Committee and Academic Council of the Institute for transnational Arbitration. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a founding member of the Arbitration Club of New York. He has advised the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Republic of Kosovo on comparative and international law issues, including investment treaties. He was a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School and the City University of Hong Kong School of Law, in 2010 and 2008, respectively. Cheng holds Doctor of the Science of Law and Master of Laws degrees from Yale Law School, where he was Howard M. Holtzmann Fellow for International Law.

Dec 01, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Vali Nasr, Professor of International Politics at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Vali Nasr, Professor of International Politics at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

The Middle East After The Arab Spring: Economics, Identity, Strategy

Vali Nasr is considered by many American leaders to be the leading foreign policy analyst of the Middle East. Nasr has testified before Congress, advised the President Obama and Vice-President Biden on sectarian violence in Iraq and U.S.-Iran relations, briefed the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of Defense as well as private sector executives.  Nasr contributes regularly to The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal as well as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Time. He has authored several cutting edge books on Muslim politics and Islam, including The Shia Revival and his latest, Forces of Fortune, in which he argues that the rising Muslim Middle class which values peace and stability, is the best counterweight to radical Islamic extremism. He is has also appeared on CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.

Born in Iran, Nasr is a professor of international relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. From 2009 to 2011, he was an advisor Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nasr served previously as adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center at Harvard University. He is a specialist on Middle East politics and political Islam, and has worked extensively on political and social developments in the Muslim world with a focus on the relation of religion to politics, social change, and democratization. He received a BA from Tufts University and a masters from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and earned his PhD from MIT in political science.

Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Michelle Bachelet Jeria, former President of Chile; first Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women

Michelle Bachelet Jeria, former President of Chile; first Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women

Empowering Women to Meet New Challenges, from National Development to Conflict Prevention and Post-Conflict Recovery

Michelle Bachelet is the first Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, which was established on July 2, 2010 by the United Nations General Assembly.  Under Bachelet’s leadership, UN Women will lead, support and coordinate the work on gender equality and the empowerment of women at global, regional and country levels.

Prior to this appointment, Bachelet served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010, becoming the first woman to ever hold this post.  A long-time champion of women’s rights, she has advocated for gender equality and women’s empowerment throughout her career.  One of her major successes as President was her decision to save billions of dollars in revenues to spend on issues such as pension reform, social protection programs for women and children, and research and development, despite the financial crisis.

Ms. Bachelet also held ministerial portfolios in the Chilean Government as Minister of Defense and Minister of Health. As the first female Defense Minister in all of Latin America, Ms. Bachelet introduced gender policies intended to improve the conditions of women in the military and police forces. As Minister of Health, she implemented health care reform, improving attention to primary care facilities with the aim of ensuring better and faster health care response for families.

 


Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Qubad Talabani, Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the U.S.

Qubad Talabani, Kurdistan Regional Government Representative to the U.S.

The Road to a Unified Iraq: Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’as

Qubad J. Talabani is the Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the United States and the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. As Representative of the KRG, Talabani works closely with the U.S. Government, the media, and research institutions providing critical analysis and up-to-date information on Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. He hopes to mobilize grassroots support for Kurdish interests, including establishing a Kurdish Congressional Caucus, a Kurdish-American Business Council, and a series of Kurdish educational and cultural links with the U.S.

Previously, from 2001 until 2003, Talabani served as the Deputy Representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Washington D.C.   Prior to this appointment he was a special assistant to the then PUK representative, Dr. Barham Salih, who is currently Iraq’s minister for planning and international development coordination. Following Operation Iraqi Freedom in the spring of 2003, Talabani served as the Senior Foreign Relations officer for PUK operating mainly out of Baghdad and Sulaimania. He worked closely with the U.S.-led Coalition Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and was PUK’s top liaison to the Coalition after and to U.S. forces in Iraq.  Talabani was also a key negotiator in drafting the Transitional Administrative Law, Iraq’s first post-Saddam constitution.

Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Gillian Sorensen, Senior Advisor, United Nations Foundation

Gillian Sorensen, Senior Advisor, United Nations Foundation

The United States and the United Nations: What’s at Stake and Why it Matters

A powerful woman with a unique vantage point on major international issues, Gillian Sorensen has achieved a distinguished career at the United Nations (UN), spanning the administration of two Secretary-Generals, Kofi Annan, where she served as Assistant Secretary-General for External Affairs, and as Special Advisor for Public Policy to Boutros Boutros-Ghali. In the course of her service, she was responsible for 4,000 non-governmental organizations, other UN issues relating to the world at large, as well as serving as an emissary for the Secretary-General.

A Senior Advisor to the United Nations Foundation, Sorensen provides a frank and provocative message on the importance of the UN in the 21st century. With a clear view of the big picture, she continues to address the world’s most pressing problems as she works to broaden UN support thorough advocacy, education, and public outreach. Earlier, she served for over twelve years on appointment by Mayor Edward I. Koch as New York City commissioner for the United Nations and Consular Corps, head of the city’s liaison with the world’s largest diplomatic community.

Mrs. Sorensen is a graduate of Smith College and studied at the Sorbonne. In the fall of 2002, on leave from the UN, she was a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government (Institute of Politics) at Harvard University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy. Previously, she served as a board member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on appointment by the president of the United States. Gillian Sorensen is the widow of Network 20/20 Advisory Council Member Ted Sorensen.

Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, speaks to Network 20/20 members

Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University; Network 20/20 Advisory Council member

The Energy Challenge: Middle East Oil and Sustainability

Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
Eighth Annual Foreign Policy Lecture and Benefit

Eighth Annual Foreign Policy Lecture and Benefit

Feb 10, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

David Lampton, Director of the China Studies Program and Dean of Faculty, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

The Network 20/20 Annual Lecture on Sino-Western Relations

The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money and Minds

Jan 11, 2011 | 0 comments View Post
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