2010 Annual Conference

REGISTRATION

Click on the appropriate link below to register for the Annual Conference, Banquet, and Keynote Luncheon:

General Admission

MEI Members

Press

LOCATION

Grand Hyatt Washington
1000 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20001

BANQUET

Wednesday, November 3, 2010
6:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Award Recipient

H.E. Issam M. Fares

Former Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon

H.E. Issam M. Fares served as Lebanon's Deputy Prime Minister from 2000 to 2005 and as a Member of Parliament from 1996 to 2005. A renowned philanthropist, Mr. Fares established the Fares Foundation in the early 1970s to support public welfare, health and educational projects in Lebanon. The Foundation provides assistance and support without regard to religion, politics or ideology. Mr. Fares is also a successful businessman, having founded diverse corporations that now employ over 70,000 people worldwide. He is commonly called upon to share his insights with academic and policy institutions, and has supported universities in the United States, Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Both the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University and the American University of Beirut's Issam Fares Institute are renowned for their programs aimed at enhancing understanding of the Middle East. Mr. Fares has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Grand Officier of the Legion d'Honneur of France, and UNESCO's Golden Medal of Acropole.

Emcee

Riz Khan, Al Jazeera English

Riz Khan is the host of the Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera Engligh. Prior to joining Al Jazeera, Khan was a presenter and reporter at the BBC for eight years and was the first mainstream Asian newsreader for their international network. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. After presenting there for two years, Khan left BBC for CNN’s international channel, where he became a senior anchor for the network’s global news shows and special events including the historic live coverage of the Hajj. In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show on CNN: Q&A with Riz Khan and he has conducted thousands of interviews with guests including the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. In 2005 Khan authored his first book: Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince, published by Harper Collins.

CONFERENCE

Thursday, November 4, 2010
9:00 am to 5:00 pm

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Saeb Erakat, Palestinian Liberation Organization

Dr. Saeb Erakat is the Chief Negotiator for the PLO and Head of the Steering and Monitoring Committee the Negotiation Affairs Department. Previously, Dr. Erakat served as the Minister of Local Government and was appointed the Head of the Central Elections Commission, a post from which he resigned in December 1995 to run for elections in Jericho. He was elected to the PLC in 1996. Dr. Erakat was Vice-Chair of the Madrid Peace Delegation and was later the Vice-Chair at the Washington negotiations of 1992. He was appointed the Chairman of the Palestinian delegation for negotiations on elections in 1994, and has since been a senior member of the Palestinian negotiation team. He has been extensively involved in all negotiations with Israel, including those conducted at Camp David (2000) and in Taba (2001). Dr. Erakat is a professor of political science at An-Najah University in Nablus. He has served on the editorial board of Al-Quds newspaper, and as the Secretary-General of the Arab Studies Society.

Panelists

General David W. Barno, Center for A New American Security

General Barno is a Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. A highly decorated military officer with over 30 years of service, General Barno has served in a variety of command and staff positions in the United States and around the world, including command at every level. In 2003, he was selected to establish a new three-star operational headquarters in Afghanistan and take command of the 20,000 U.S. and Coalition Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. For 19 months in this position, he was responsible for the overall military leadership of this complex political-military mission, devising a highly innovative counterinsurgency strategy in close partnership with the U.S. embassy and coalition allies. From 2007 to 2009, General Barno served as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families. He frequently serves as an expert consultant on counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, professional military education and the changing character of conflict. He is a member of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Class of 1976 and has a master’s degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, Rice University

Edward P. Djerejian served in the United States Foreign Service in eight Administrations from John F. Kennedy to William J. Clinton. Prior to his nomination by President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, he was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations. Djerejian was U.S. Ambassador to the Syrian Arab Republic from 1988-1991, and served as Special Assistant to President Reagan and Deputy Press Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the White House After his retirement from government service in 1994, he became the Founding Director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. He was appointed in 2003 by Secretary of State Colin Powell to chair the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. Djerejian was Senior Advisor to the Iraq Study Group in 2006. He is the author of Danger and Opportunity—An American Ambassador’s Journey Through the Middle East (Simon & Schuster 2008).

Dr. David Kilcullen, Center for A New American Security

Dr. David Kilcullen is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the President & Chief Executive Officer of Caerus. Kilcullen was previously Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, commanding Multinational Force Iraq. In 2005-6 he was chief counter-terrorism strategist at the U.S. State Department and helped design and implement the Regional Strategic Initiative. From 2004 to 2005 he was seconded to the Pentagon in Washington D.C. where he wrote the counterterrorism strategy for the 2006 U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review. A former Australian infantry officer with 22 years’ service, Kilcullen holds several honors and decorations, including the United States Army Superior Civilian Service Medal, the first such award to a foreign national serving in combat alongside U.S. Forces. He is the author of The Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford University Press, 2009) and, most recently, Counterinsurgency (Oxford University Pres, 2010).

David Makovsky, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and Director of The Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Mr. Makovsky is the author or coauthor of a variety of publications on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including his latest book (with Dennis Ross), Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and National Interest. Before joining The Washington Institute, Mr. Makovsky was an award-winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to 2000. He is the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post, was diplomatic correspondent for Israel's leading daily, Haaretz, and is a former contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report.

Robert Malley, International Crisis Group

Robert Malley is the Middle East and North Africa Program Director of the International Crisis Group. He directs analysts based in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Baghdad. Together they report on the political, social and economic factors affecting the risk of conflict and make policy recommendations to address these threats. Malley covers events from Iran to Morocco, with a heavy focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, and Islamist movements throughout the region, as well as developments in the United States that affect policy toward the Middle East. Prior to his work at ICG, Mr. Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab Israeli Affairs (1998-2001), Executive Assistant to National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger (199601998) and Director for Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at the National Security council (1994-1996).

Suzanne Maloney, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Suzanne Maloney is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on energy, economic reform and U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Maloney has launched a new book project on Iran’s political economy since the Islamic Revolution, and is co-authoring a set of policy recommendations on Iran for the next U.S. administration as part of a joint project of the Saban Center and the Council on Foreign Relations. The U.S. Institute of Peace will publish her monograph on Iran’s relationship with the Muslim world, Iran’s Long Reach, in 2008. Prior to joining Brookings, Maloney was a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, covering Iran, Iraq, the Gulf States and broader Middle East issues. Her career includes positions at ExxonMobil Corporation, where she worked on regional business development, political risk analysis, and corporate outreach and communications. Maloney also directed the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on US Policy toward Iran, chaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates.

Prof. Paul Pillar, Georgetown University

Paul Pillar is a Visiting Professor and Director of Studies of the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He has been Executive Assistant to CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence and Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster. He has also headed the Assessments and Information Group of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and from 1997 to 1999 was deputy chief of the center. He was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 1999-2000. Professor Pillar is a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and served on active duty in 1971-1973, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Itamar Rabinovich, Stanford University

Itamar Rabinovich is a former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and former Chief Negotiator with Syria. He is a Distinguished Global Professor at NYU and a Distinguished Non- Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center. Professor Rabinovich is serves on the board of numerous institutions around the world, including Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and the International Advisory Board of the Brookings Institution. He is also a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle-Eastern studies and co-editor of the Center's new review journal, Bustan. He is the author of numerous books on the modern history and politics of the Middle East, the most recent of which is The View from Damascus: State, Political Community and Foreign Relations in Twentieth-Century Syria (Mitchell Vallentine, 2008).

Mitchell Reiss, Washington College

Mitchell Reiss is president of Washington College. Previously, he was the diplomat-in-residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where he held a number of leadership positions including vice provost for international affairs, dean and director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies; he also holds appointments in the School of Law and the Government Department and is a senior associate of the CSIS International Security Program. Reiss was director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, where he provided Secretary Colin L. Powell with independent strategic advice and policy recommendations from 2003-2005. In 2003, he was asked to serve concurrently as the President's special envoy for the Northern Ireland Peace Process with the rank of Ambassador. He has also served as the special assistant to the national security adviser at the White House and consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Congressional Research Service, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Reiss has published widely on issues of international trade, security and arms control. His forthcoming book is entitled Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists.

Jessica Stern, Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard University

Jessica Stern is a Lecturer in Public Policy and a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. From 1994–95, she served as Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where she was responsible for national security policy toward Russia and the former Soviet states and for policies to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism. From 998–99, she was the superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and from 1995–96, she was a national Fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She also worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Stern received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in chemistry, a master of science degree from MIT, and a doctorate in public policy from Harvard. She is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Terror in the Name of God and The Ultimate Terrorists, as well as numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations

Ray Takeyh specializes in Iran, the Persian Gulf, and U.S. foreign policy, and he is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Previous to his current position, Dr. Takeyh was the senior advisor to the special adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia at the U.S. Department of State. He has held positions of professor at the National War College, director at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University, fellow in international security studies at Yale University and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has also published extensive literature on the subject. His most recent book is The Guardians of the Revolution: Iran’s Approach to the World (Oxford University Press, 2009). He has also written many articles and his commentaries have been featured in many of the premier newspapers of the country, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune.

Ömer Taşpınar, Brookings

Ömer Taşpınar is the Director of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution as well as a nonresident Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy. He is a professor at the National War College and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Taşpınar is an expert on Turkey, the European Union, Muslims in Europe, political Islam, the Middle East and Kurdish nationalism. He has held consulting positions at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and at the Strategic Planning Department of TOFAS-FIAT in Istanbul. Dr. Taşpınar is the author of two books: Political Islam and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey (Routledge, 2005) and Fighting Radicalism with Human Development: Freedom, Education and Growth in the Islamic World (Brookings, 2006).

Shibley Telhami, Brookings

Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, is a former advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and the Iraq Study Group. He is an expert on U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly on the role of the news media in shaping political identity and public opinion in the region. Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has served as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee and on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. Professor Telhami has contributed to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times and regularly appears on national and international radio and television He has also co-drafted several Council on Foreign Relations reports on US public diplomacy, on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and on Persian Gulf security. Telhami is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of the Education for Employment Foundation.

Moderators

Roger Hardy, Woodrow Wilson Center

Roger Hardy worked for the BBC World Service for over twenty years as a Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst. He wrote and presented a series of radio programmes about the Arab-Israeli conflict, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the role of Islam in such diverse settings as south-east Asia, the Middle East and Europe. He turned some of his experiences into a book, The Muslim Revolt: A Journey through Political Islam, which was published earlier this year. He is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

CONFERENCE HOSTS

Wendy J. Chamberlin, President, Middle East Institute

Wendy Chamberlin has been President of the Middle East Institute since March 2007. A 29-year veteran of the US Foreign Service, she was US Ambassador to Pakistan from 2001 to 2002. Chamberlin also served as Director of Global Affairs and Counter-Terrorism at the National Security Council (1991-1993), Deputy in the Bureau of International Counter-Narcotics and Law Programs (1999-2001), and as Assistant Administrator in the Asia-Near East Bureau for USAID (2002-2004). She also served as US Ambassador to the Laos People’s Democratic Republic (1996-1999). Prior to joining MEI, Chamberlin served as Deputy High Commissioner for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2004-2006).