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The turmoil that began in Tunisia in December 2010 has spread throughout the region. The big question is whether the Arab Spring will pave the way for a transition to democratic regimes or to a different form of dictatorship. At this historic moment in the Middle East, the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Wachman Center will bring together leading academic experts in relevant fields—including Middle East specialists from the fields of history, cultural studies, economics, political science and international relations—to place these events in historical perspective, enabling secondary school teachers to help their students connect the headlines of the day with an understanding of the region’s history.
E-mail lux@fpri.org for more information.
)Daniel Brumberg, Senior Adviser to the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, on Islam and Democracy in the Middle East
Daniel Brumberg is Senior Adviser to the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, where he focuses on issues of democratization and political reform in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. He is also an associate professor at Georgetown University and a former senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law Project (2003-04). Previously, he was a Jennings Randolph senior fellow at USIP, where he pursued a study of power sharing in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Brumberg was a Mellon junior fellow at Georgetown University and a visiting fellow at the International Forum on Democratic Studies. He was a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University and a visiting fellow in the Middle East Program in the Jimmy Carter Center, and has taught at the University of Chicago. Brumberg is the author of many articles on political and social change in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. With a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he is currently working on a comparative study of power-sharing experiments in Algeria, Kuwait and Indonesia. A member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and the advisory board of the International Forum on Democratic Studies, Brumberg is also chairman of the nonprofit Foundation on Democratization and Political Change in the Middle East. He has worked closely with a number of nongovernmental organizations in the Arab world, including the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. Brumberg is also a member of the editorial board of the American Political Science Association’s Political Science and Politics. He received his B.A. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Jillian Schwedler, Associate Professor of Political Science, Honors Program Director at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, on Political Culture, Protest and Dissent in Jordan
Jillian Schwedler is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Uiversity of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the Honors Program Director. She is currently completing a book manuscript tentatively titled Protesting Jordan: Law, Space, Dissent, and is the author of Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge University Press, 2006). She received her Ph.D. in Politics, Masters in Middle East Studies, and Bachelors in Near Eastern Languages and Literature, all from New York University.
Amin Tarzi, Director, Middle East Studies, Marine Corps University, on Is the Green Movement Dead? Political Dissent in Iran
Amin Tarzi is the Director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. In his position, Dr. Tarzi supports the MCU by providing a resident scholar with expertise in Middle East and South/Central Asia, representing the Marine Corps at various academic and professional forums, and providing expert advice for all Professional Military Education programs. Prior to joining the MCU, Dr. Tarzi was with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Regional Analysis team focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. While working at RFE/RL, he also taught courses in political Islam, cultural intelligence, terrorist organizations and similar topics at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Before joining RFE/RL, Dr. Tarzi worked as Senior Research Associate for the Middle East at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies where he primarily researched Iran and its missile and nuclear developments and policies. At the Monterey Institute, Dr. Tarzi also taught a graduate seminar on Middle East security policies and threat perceptions with focus on Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Israel. His work experience includes the post of Political Advisor to the Saudi Arabian Mission at the United Nations and the position of Researcher/Analyst on Iranian affairs at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi. In addition to his formal work, Dr. Tarzi participated for five years in a series of informal Track II meetings with civilian and military personalities from Iran, Israel and several Arab states to discuss threat perceptions, security and confidence building measures, among other topics. He has lived and traveled extensively in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and the United Arab Emirates and has traveled several times to Iran and other Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Middle East Studies at New York University. His latest works are Taliban and the Crisis in Afghanistan, a co-edited volume with Professor Robert D. Crews of Stanford University (Harvard University Press, 2008) and The Iranian Puzzle Piece: Understanding Iran in the Global Context (MCU Press, 2009).
Christopher Swift, Fellow at the University of Virginia Law School’s Center for International Security Law, on The Crisis in Yemen: AQAP, Saleh, and Governmental Instabillity
Christopher Swift is an attorney and political scientist specializing in international law and contemporary armed conflict. A fellow at the University of Virginia Law School’s Center for International Security Law, he has travelled to Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union to examine al-Qaeda’s relationships with indigenous Muslim insurgencies. Dr. Swift’s legal practice focuses on complex international disputes, compliance with U.S. foreign trade and investment laws, and various aspects of public and private international law. Prior to joining the University of Virginia, he served in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), where he enforced economic sanctions programs targeting terrorist syndicates, weapons proliferators, and other specially designated entities. Between 2006 and 2007, Dr. Swift served an international law fellow at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he examined armed conflict and sectarian violence in Iraq. He was previously affiliated with organizations including Freedom House, where he worked on Russian affairs, and the Center for Strategic & International Studies, where he served as an aide to former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. A term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Swift has appeared as a guest analyst for CNN International, BBC News, National Public Radio, RT Television, Voice of America and other leading international broadcast media. He holds an A.B. in Government and History from Dartmouth College, an M.St. in International Relations of the University of Cambridge, and a J.D. from Georgetown University. He successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in Politics & International Studies at the University of Cambridge in October 2010.
Eric Trager, FPRI Associate Scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, on Elections, Repression, Sucession and the Future of Egypt
Eric Trager is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ira Weiner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Trager writes for Commentary Magazine, Atlantic Online, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic. For his dissertation on Egyptian governance, he has interviewed over 100 opposition leaders.
Michael Reynolds, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, on Turkey and Its Foreign Policy under AKP
Michael A. Reynolds has been an assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University since 2005. He received his BA in Government and Slavic Languages from Harvard University, MA in Political Science from Columbia University, and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He teaches courses including Introduction to the Middle East; Nation, State, and Empire: The Ottoman, Romanov, and Hapsburg Experiences; Comparative Transformations in the Middle East and Eurasia; and War and Politics in the Modern Middle East. He is author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and the Russian Empires (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Audra Grant, Political Scientist, Rand Corporation, on The Moroccan Model
Audra Grant is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where she has worked on various projects concerning the evolution of domestic politics of Iraq; tribal configurations and insurgent group organization in Iraq; development in Al-Anbar province; the nature of apocalyptic rhetoric in Muslim discourse and Muslim perceptions thereof; the structure of attitudinal support for radicalism in the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia; and issues related to democracy and governance in Africa and the Middle East and to societies in transition. A former intelligence analyst at the U.S. State Department, Grant focused on Middle East political analysis and on implementing and analyzing public opinion research in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She has conducted research on the dynamics of political Islam; democratization; and U.S. foreign policy in her extensive travels to the MENA, including Iraq. She has published articles on party dynamics in Algeria and Morocco; peace and reconciliation in Algeria; attitudes among Arab-Israelis; identifying support for democratization among Palestinians; gender as a determinant of support for political Islam and hard-line foreign policies; and illicit trade patterns in Africa. A visiting scholar at Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco (2006–07), Grant taught courses on Middle East politics and U.S. foreign policy and is an adjunct professor at The George Washington University. She is fluent in German and proficient in Arabic. Grant has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Michael S. Doran, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
An expert on the international politics of the Middle East, Michael Doran has worked in both academia and government. In government he has served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and as a Senior Director at the National Security Council. He has held appointments at Princeton University, University of Central Florida, and NYU. A He has published frequently in Foreign Affairs magazine, and one of his articles, “Somebody Else’s Civil War” (Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2002), was the first piece after 9/11 to interpret al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington as an expression of a war within Islam—a thesis that is now common wisdom. Dr. Doran received his MA and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University.
Adam Garfinkle, Editor, The American Interest
Dr. Adam Garfinkle is founding editor of The American Interest. Before founding The American Interest in 2005, he served in 2003-05 as principal speechwriter to the Secretary of State (S/P, Policy Planning). He has also been editor of The National Interest and has taught at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College and other institutions of higher learning.
Dr. Garfinkle served as a member of the National Security Study Group (as chief writer) of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart-Rudman Commission), and as an aide to Senator Henry M. Jackson.
For information about future and previous history institutes visit: http://www.fpri.org/education/historyinstitutes.html
For information about FPRI's Program on Teaching the Middle East and 9/11 visit: http://www.fpri.org/education/middleeast/
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On November 15th at the FPRI annual dinner Fouad Ajami was presented with the Seventh Annual Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award. The event was attended by over 360 people.
Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr. was dinner chairman.
Video of keynote address
Reflections on the Arab Spring
Fouad Ajami
Special Partner Event
Al Qaeda and Jihadi Movements After Bin Laden
Christopher Swift
Special Partner Event
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda
Peter Bergen
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