Recent Forums

Forum: Chávez's Venezuela After a Decade of Bolivarian Revolution

JENNIFER MCCOY is a Political Science Professor at Georgia State University, and Director of the Americas Program at The Carter Center in Atlanta. She is an internationally recognized expert on Venezuelan politics, and she accompanied President Jimmy Carter on his historic 2002 trip to Cuba. She is editor and contributor to The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela (Johns Hopkins University, 2004); Political Learning and Redemocratization in Latin America: Do Political Leaders Learn from Political Crises? (North-South Center, 2000); and Venezuelan Democracy Under Stress (North-South Center, 1995).

Forum: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

JAMES BAMFORD is the author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (Anchor, 2002), and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (Anchor, 2004). A former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, he has written investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: Interagency Relationships in the Intelligence Community

 PHILIP MUDD joined the CIA in 1985 as a leadership analyst responsible for South Asian issues, and in 1992 began focusing on Middle East terrorism - particularly Iranian state-sponsored terrorism - in the Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) in 1992. Mudd later became the Deputy Director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis. In 2003, he was appointed the CTC's Deputy Director, and in 2005 became Associate Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch. The Director of Central Intelligence gave Mudd the Director's Award in 2004, for his leadership, extraordinary fidelity, and essential service.

Forum: One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

MICHAEL DOBBS joined the Washington Post as its Warsaw correspondent in 1980. He was the first Western journalist to visit the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980, and spent much of the '80s covering the collapse of Communism from Eastern Europe, Russia, and China. Dobbs has also covered the State Department and been a foreign investigative reporter for the Post, and has held fellowships at Harvard and Princeton universities. He is the author of Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (Vintage, 1998) and Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Henry Holt and Co., 1999). A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence

ROBERT SAMUELSON is one of Newsweek's most recognized writers for his biweekly columns analyzing and reporting socioeconomic issues. His other biweekly column appears in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. Samuelson's many journalism awards include the 1993 John Hancock Award for Best Business and Financial Columnist and the 1993 Gerald Loeb Award for Best Commentary. He has also worked for the Washington Post's Business Desk and for The New Republic. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: An Open, Civilized World

PHILIP ZELIKOW is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at U.Va., and a former Director of the Miller Center (1998-2005). He served as Director of three bipartisan commissions, including the 9/11 Commission, and was Counselor to the Department of State (2005-07).

 ERNEST MAY is Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has been a consultant to the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and other agencies, and was Senior Advisor to the 9/11 Commission (2003-04). May is a former Dean of Harvard College, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Institute of Politics.

Forum: The United Nations and International Peace

EDWARD LUCK is Senior Vice President and Director of Studies, International Peace Institute. In February 2008, he was appointed Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, in which capacity he primarily focuses on the responsibility to protect. Luck is Director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is also the founder and former Executive Director of the Center for the Study of International Organization at the NYU School of Law, and former President and CEO of the United Nations Association of the USA (1984-94). Luck is the co-editor of International Law and Organization: Closing the Compliance Gap (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and the author of Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization, 1919-1999 (Brookings, 1999).

Forum: Intelligence Analysis and Dissemination

THOMAS FINGAR, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He became Assistant Secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research in 2004. He previously served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis, Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific, and Chief of the China Division. Between 1975 and 1986, Fingar held several positions at Stanford University in the Center for International Security and Arms Control, and Director of the U.S.-China Relations Program.

Forum: The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

Aaron David Miller is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. He has served as a State Department adviser to six Secretaries of State, and he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli peace process. Miller has written three books on the Middle East, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. A book signing will follow his Forum.

Forum: U.S.-Latin American Relations: Recommendations for the New Administration

Michael Shifter,Vice President for Policy & Director of the Andean Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Shifter is a former director of the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy, and at the Ford Foundation. He is a contributing editor to Current History, and co-editor of Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America (John Hopkins U Press), and has testified before Congress about U.S. policy towards Latin America.

Michael Shifter's paper