The Ronald Reagan Centennial Conference: Participants

"Reagan in a World Transformed, 1981–2011"

Panel One

Julian E. Zelizer

Julian E. Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is a regular contributor to CNN.com and Politico. Zelizer’s books include Jimmy Carter; Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989 (with Meg Jacobs); and Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security - From World War II to the War on Terrorism.

Michael Barone

Michael Barone is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a contributor to Fox News Channel and principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. He worked previously for U.S. News & World Report, Reader’s Digest, and the Washington Post.

Kiron Skinner

Kiron Skinner is Director of the Center for International Relations and Politics, and Associate Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Skinner is a coauthor (with Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Condoleezza Rice) of The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin.

Peter Trubowitz

Peter Trubowitz is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books on international politics and U.S. foreign policy, including Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft; Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy; and The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests.

Panel Two

Melvyn P. Leffler

Melvyn P. Leffler, Faculty Associate in the Miller Center of Public Affairs’ Governing America in a Global Era Program, is Edward R. Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of the Bancroft Prize-winning book A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War and For the Soul of Mankind: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.

Thomas Blanton

Thomas Blanton is Director of the National Security Archive at The George Washington University and series editor of the Archive’s award-winning publications totaling more than a million pages of declassified documents. He is author of the forthcoming book The Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush.

Eliot Cohen

Eliot Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, and founding Director of the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. From 2007 to 2009 he was Counselor of the Department of State. Cohen also served on the Defense Policy Advisory Board and the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of Defense.

Beth A. Fischer

Beth A. Fischer is on the faculty at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War, and has written extensively on the end of the Cold War. Fischer is currently writing a book entitled Triumph? The Reagan Legacy and American Foreign Policy Today.

Panel Three

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. His latest book is The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World.

Paula J. Dobriansky

Paula J. Dobriansky is Distinguished National Security Chair at the U.S. Naval Academy and Adjunct Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Ambassador Dobriansky is also a Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government & Regulatory Affairs at Thomson Reuters. She served as Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs from 2001 to 2009.

Carl Gershman

Carl Gershman is President of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has overseen the creation of the Journal of Democracy, the International Forum for Democratic Studies, and the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program. He also helped initiate the World Movement for Democracy, a global network of democracy practitioners and scholars.

Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan is a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. He also writes a monthly column on world affairs for the Washington Post, and is a contributing editor at both the Weekly Standard and the New Republic. He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

Paul Kengor

Paul Kengor is Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His books on Ronald Reagan include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism; The Reagan Presidency: Analyzing the Man and His Legacy; and the best-seller God and Ronald Reagan.

Panel Four

Jeffry Frieden

Jeffry Frieden is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the author (with Menzie Chinn) of the forthcoming Lost Decades: The Making of America’s Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery. His previous books include Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century and Banking on the World: The Politics of American International Finance.

Alfred E. Eckes

Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. is Ohio Eminent Research Professor in Contemporary History at Ohio University. From 1981 to 1990, he served as a Commissioner (Chairman from 1982 to 1984) on the U.S. International Trade Commission. From 2004 to 2010, Eckes served as Executive Vice President of the International Trade and Finance Association.

Allan Meltzer

Allan Meltzer is the Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was Chair of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, and founder and Chairman of the Shadow Open Market Committee from 1973 to 2000.

Henry R. Nau

Henry R. Nau is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He directs the U.S.-Japan-South Korea Legislative Exchange Program. Nau served from 1981 to 1983 as senior NSC staff member responsible for international economic affairs and, from 1975 to 1977, as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.

Panel Five

Zalmay Khalilzad

Zalmay Khalilzad is President of Khalilzad Associates. From 2007 to 2009, he served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Prior to that, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from 2005 to 2007 and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. Ambassador Khalilzad also served as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2003.

John B. Bellinger

John B. Bellinger III is a partner in the international and national security practices of Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, DC, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as Legal Adviser to the State Department and the National Security Council. Bellinger is also one of four U.S. members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Barry E. Carter

Barry E. Carter is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he is also the Director of the Center on Transnational Business and the Law. He has served in various governmental positions in the Department of Commerce, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the National Security Council. Carter also served as Executive Director of the American Society of International Law.

Kim R. Holmes

Kim R. Holmes is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies and Director of the Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 2001 to 2005. Holmes’ published works include the Index of Economic Freedom, produced annually with The Wall Street Journal.

Keynote Roundtable

Andrea Mitchell

Andrea Mitchell is NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and host of MSNBC'S “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” She joined NBC News in 1978 as a general correspondent, and went on to serve as Chief Congressional Correspondent, Chief White House Correspondent, and host of MSNBC’s “The Mitchell Report,” among other assignments. She is the author of Talking Back, a memoir about her experiences as one of the first women to cover five presidents, congress and foreign policy.

Richard N. Haass

Richard N. Haass has served as President of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2003. From 2001 to 2003, he was Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State. Dr. Haass also served as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. He is the author or editor of eleven books on American foreign policy, including War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.

John D. Negroponte

John D. Negroponte served in senior government positions abroad and in Washington between 1960 and 1997, and again from 2001 to 2008. He has been U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. He has also served as Deputy National Security Advisor, Deputy Secretary of State, and the first Director of National Intelligence. Since 2009, Ambassador Negroponte has been Vice Chairman of McLarty Associates.

John Warner

John Warner served as United States Senator from Virginia from 1979 to 2009, becoming the second longest-serving U.S. Senator in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia. His service in the Senate included three periods as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. In 2009, Senator Warner returned as a partner to the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where he joined as an associate in 1961 and became a partner in 1964.

Jim Webb

Jim Webb presently serves as the senior Senator from Virginia. He served previously as Secretary of the Navy from 1987 to 1988, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs from 1984 to 1987, and Counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981. Senator Webb is also a decorated Marine combat veteran, an attorney, an Emmy-award winning journalist, a film-maker, and the author of nine books.

Keynote Address

Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney served as Canada’s eighteenth Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993. In 1988, he became the first Canadian Prime Minister in 35 years to win successive majority governments and the first Conservative Prime Minister to do so in 100 years. He practised law and served as President of the Iron Ore Company of Canada before entering politics by becoming Party Leader and Leader of the Official Opposition in 1983. Upon resigning, Mr. Mulroney rejoined the Montreal law firm of Ogilvy Renault as Senior Partner.

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