Speakers
Dr. Robert Malley
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 ~ 6:00 – 8:00pm ~ ENG 103
Robert Malley has been Director of the International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program since January 2002. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Until January 2001, Mr. Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. In this capacity, he served as a principal advisor to the President and the National Security Advisor at the White House on the Middle East peace process.
Mr. Malley joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. He helped coordinate U.S. refugee policy and efforts to promote democracy and human rights abroad. He also played a leading role in U.S. policy toward Cuba. In July 1997, he became Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor from July 1997 to September 1998, acting as an informal chief of staff for Samuel R. Berger. Mr. Malley served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court in 1991-1992.
Mr. Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of “The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam” and, with Hussein Agha, of “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors ,” “The Last Negotiation”, “Three Men in a Boat” and “Hamas – The Perils of Power”.
An extensive list of his publications can be found at his ICG Bio Page .
Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors
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Dr. Juan Cole
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 ~ 6:00 – 8:00 pm ~ ENG 103
Dr. Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, Dr. Cole has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on The Colbert Report, ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Democracy Now! and many others. He has also given many radio and press interviews. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the increasing conflict with Iran. He has a regular column at Salon.com. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there. He is also President of the Global Americana Institute and author of the popular blog Informed Comment Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion.
Dr. Juan Cole on Democracy Now!
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Prof. Michael Bell
Thursday, October 8, 2009 ~ 6:00-8:00pm ~ ENG 103
Professor Michael Bell is the current holder of the Paul Martin (Snr) Senior Scholar in International Relations. He is based within the Political Science department at the University of Windsor, where he teaches two classes a year on Middle East politics and history. Professor Bell is also a director of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative.
As former Chair of the Donor Committee of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, Bell has had considerable experience in conflict management, mediation, peace-building, peace-keeping, policy analysis and formulation, governance, human rights, civil society and economic and social development.
Professor Bell is a former Canadian Foreign Service Officer with 36 years experience in the Department of Foreign Affairs, mostly focused on the Middle East. He was Canada’s Ambassador to Jordan (1987-90), Egypt (1994-98), and Israel (1990-92 and 1999- 2003).
He was Executive Assistant for Middle East Affairs to the Honourable Robert Stanfield (1978-79), Director of the Middle East Relations Division (1983-87), Director General for Central and Eastern Europe (1992-94) and Fellow at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs at Harvard University (1998-99). From 2003-2005 he was Senior Scholar on Diplomacy at the Munk Centre for International Studies, at the University of Toronto.
Mr. Bell has been a contributor to the Globe and Mail. He has also published in the Literary Review of Canada, the Behind the Headlines series of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Idea&s: the Arts and Science Review of the University of Toronto, the International Journal, and the Journal of International Law and International Relations.
Pathless in Gaza – Michael Bell, The Globe and Mail
Israels Endless Birth Pains – Michael Bell, The Globe and Mail
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Yossi Alpher
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 ~ 6:00 – 8:00pm ~ ENG 103
Yossi (Joseph) Alpher is a consultant and writer on Israel-related strategic issues, and is co-editor, with Ghassan Khatib (former minister of planning in the Palestinian Authority) of bitterlemons.org, a web-based Israeli-Palestinian political dialogue magazine and bitterlemons-international.org, a web-based “Middle East roundtable”. He also writes Hard questions, tough answers, a weekly security Q&A available at peacenow.org, and a monthly column, The strategic interest (for which he won the 2009 American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower first place award for excellence in commentary) for The Forward. Alpher serves on the executive committee of the Council for Peace and Security.
Alpher served in the Israel Defense Forces as an Intelligence officer, followed by 12 years service in the Mossad. From 1981 to 1995 he was associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, ultimately serving as director of center. From 1995 to 2000 he served as director of the American Jewish Committee’s Israel/Middle East Office in Jerusalem. While at the Jaffee Center, Alpher coordinated and coedited the JCSS research project on options for a Palestinian settlement, and produced “The Alpher Plan” for an Israeli-Palestinian territorial settlement. Since 1992 he has coordinated several track II dialogues between Israelis and Arabs. In July 2000 (during the Camp David talks) he served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 2002 he published And the wolf shall dwell with the wolf: the settlers and the Palestinians (HaKibbutz Hameuchad, Hebrew).
Hard Questions Tough Answers Peacenow.org
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Dr. Yoram Peri
Thursday, November 19, 2009 ~ 6:00 – 8:00pm ~ ENG 103
Prof Yoram Peri is the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies, and Director of the new Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, the University of Maryland, College Park.
Prof. Peri is a former political advisor to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and former Editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily, Davar. He founded and served as head the Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society in Tel Aviv University, were he was a professor of Political Sociology and Communication from 2001 to 2009.
Born in Jerusalem, Dr. Peri earned his B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and Sociology at the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. Peri has led a long career in academia, focusing primarily on Israeli society, politics, military, and the media. Former senior fellow at the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv University, the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C., and other research institutes, Prof. Peri has also held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, American University, and The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is a recipient of many other awards and grants, including Fulbright Scholar.
Peri has authored two dozen chapters in scholarly books, seventeen refereed journal articles, ten monographs and five books. His most recent book, Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israel Policy (2004) was given the “Best of the Best” award in 2007 by the Association of American University Presses and the Association of American Pubic Libraries. His book Brothers at War: The Rabin’s Assassination and the Cultural War in Israel (Stanford University Press, 2005) won both the 2006 award for best book in the social sciences from the Israeli Political Science Association, as well as the 2005 “Prime Minister’s Prize.”
Among his other books are Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel was published by Stanford University Press (2004) and Between Battles and Ballots: Israel Military in Politics, published by Cambridge University Press (1984). A new edition of this book, that is considered a seminal book in the field of civil-military relations, has just been published (2009).
In addition to his academic career, Prof. Peri was a journalist and political commentator. He published extensively in newspapers and magazines in and outside Israel, and also was an editor and host of TV and radio programs. During Mrs. Golda Meir’s term as Prime Minister, he was the spokesperson for the Israel Labor Party and its special emissary to Europe. Among his various public positions, Prof. Peri was president of the Association of the editors of Israel’s Daily Newspapers and a member of the Press Council.
A Sample of The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yoram Peri
Yoram Peri for the Jerusalem Post
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Nadia Hijab
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 ~ 6:00 – 8:00pm ~ ENG 103
Nadia Hijab is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, an independent non-profit research organization and a leading resource on the Arab-Israeli conflict. She is a syndicated columnist for AgenceGlobal, and a frequent public speaker and media commentator. Hijab’s first book, Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work was published by Cambridge University Press. She co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel published by I. B. Tauris. She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before moving to New York to join the United Nations. In 2000 she established her own consulting business on human rights, human development, and gender. She has served as co-chair of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and is on its advisory board, and she is a past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates.
Contribution to the New York Times
Contribution to Middle East Online
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