'The Ecology of Nations'

Kristen Eichensehr, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor and director of the National Security Law Center at the University of Virginia School of Law. She writes and teaches about cybersecurity, foreign relations, international law, and national security law. Eichensehr clerked for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She also served as special assistant to the legal advisor of the U.S. Department of State and practiced at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C.

Aynne Kokas is the C. K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, director of the University of Virginia's East Asia Center, and an associate professor of media studies at UVA. A Fulbright scholar educated at the University of Michigan, with a PhD from UCLA, Kokas is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S. China Relations. She is the author of Hollywood Made in China, a study of the partnerships between Chinese and American producers to produce feature films for global audiences. Her latest book, Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty, examines how weak U.S. data security benefits U.S. firms while expanding the Chinese government's digital control. Her research has been supported by the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, and Social Science Research Council.

John Owen is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security; The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change 1510-2010; and The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order. A recipient of fellowships from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton Universities, Owen is a member of the editorial board of International Security and a faculty fellow at the UVA Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

Eric Edelman, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009 after having served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (2005–2009), he oversaw strategy development as the Defense Department’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and was principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for national security affairs.