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Richard Norton Smith

Topic: America Divided:
The Polarized Presidency

7:30 PM Sunday, January 13, 2013

Richard Norton Smith is a presidential historian and former head of six presidential libraries. He has published numerous books, including, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. Smith has served as director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs; the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library; and Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.
He is a nationally recognized expert on the American presidency and appears regularly on C-SPAN and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" as part of the roundtable of historians. Smith is currently scholar-in-Residence of History and Public Policy at George Mason University.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Jon Huntsman

Topic: U.S. - China Relations:
A Practitioner's Guide

7:30 PM Sunday, January 20, 2013

Utah's governor from 2005 to 2009, Jon Huntsman served in four White House administrations, most recently as U.S. ambassador to China under President Obama, until he resigned in January 2011 to run for president. He has significant foreign policy experience and speaks Mandarin fluently from his time as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. He is currently the chairman of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and is a distinguished fellow with the Brookings Institution.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

William J. Dobson

Topic: Learning Curve of Dictators

7:30 PM Sunday, February 10, 2013

William J. Dobson is the Politics & Foreign Affairs editor for Slate. He served as the Managing Editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Under his editorial direction, Foreign Policy was nominated for the National Magazine Award five years in a row - the only publication of its size to be nominated for five consecutive years - it also won the overall award for General Excellence.
During the height of the Arab Spring, the Washington Post editorial page commissioned him to write daily pieces on modern authoritarianism. While in Cairo, Dobson reported the first direct first-person account of the Egyptian military conducting torture of female protestors from Tahrir Square. His articles and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Newsweek, and elsewhere. He has provided commentary and analysis on international politics for ABC, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and NPR. His book, The Dictator's Learning Curve, was published in June 2012.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Jane Harman

Topic: Congressional Gridlock
and the Inability to Tackle the Big Issues

7:30 PM Thursday, February 14, 2013

Jane Harman is the former U.S. Representative for California's 36th congressional district, serving from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011 as is a member of the Democratic Party. Harman resigned from Congress to join the Woodrow Wilson Center as its first female Director, President and CEO. Representing the aerospace center of California during nine terms in Congress, she served on the Armed Services, Intelligence, and Homeland Security committees. Harman received the Defense Department Medal for Distinguished Service in 1998, the CIA Seal Medal in 2007, and the CIA Director's Award and the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2011. She is a member of the Defense Policy Board, State Department Foreign Policy Board, CIA External Advisory Board, the Director of National Intelligence's Senior Advisory Group, and is a Trustee of the Aspen Institute and the University of Southern California.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Dr. Stephen Roach

Topic: Pitfalls and Opportunities in a Post-Crisis World

7:30 PM Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Stephen Roach is a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a Senior Lecturer at Yale's School of Management. He was Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's Chief Economist for the bulk of his 30-year career at Morgan Stanley, heading up a highly regarded team of economists around the world. Roach's current teaching and research program focuses on the impacts of Asia on the broader global economy. His most recent book, The Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization, analyzes Asia's economic imbalances and the dangers of the region's dependence on Western consumers. It was named book of the year by CBN in 2010 - China's equivalent of the Wall Street Journal.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Dr. Fiona Hill

Topic: Where is Putin Taking Russia?

7:30 PM Sunday, February 24, 2013

Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. She is a frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, who has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. Her book with Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy is titled The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Rami George Khouri

Topic: Understanding the Uprisings and Transformations across the Arab World

7:30 PM Sunday, March 3, 2013

Rami George Khouri is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, as well as a columnist at the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. He is an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Dubai School of Government. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford, Syracuse, Tufts, Mount Holyoke and Northeastern Universities, and in November 2006 he was the co-recipient of the Pax Christi International Peace Award for his efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to the Middle East.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Frank Verrastro

Topic: The Changing Energy Landscape

7:30 PM Sunday, March 10, 2013

Frank Verrastro is senior vice president and director of the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His government service includes staff positions in the White House (Energy Policy and Planning Staff) and the Departments of Interior (Oil and Gas Office) and Energy (Domestic Policy and International Affairs Office), including serving as director of the Office of Producing Nations and deputy assistant secretary for international energy resources. In the private sector, he has served as director of refinery policy and crude oil planning for TOSCO (formerly the nation's largest independent refiner) and more recently as senior vice president for Pennzoil.

$35, General Seating

Series is sold out. However, tickets are almost always available the night of the lecture. Arrive one hour prior to lecture when Box Office opens and TAKE A CHANCE!

Senator Alan K. Simpson

Topic: The Moment of Truth:
Tough Issues Confronting America

February 2012

Senator Alan K. Simpson is a distinguished politician and lawmaker from the state of Wyoming whom President Barack Obama appointed in 2010 to co-chair the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, most famously known as the Simpson-Bowles Commission. He is a former U.S. Senator from the state of Wyoming (1979-1997) and served in the Wyoming House of Representatives (1964-1977) as Majority Whip, Majority Floor Leader and Speaker Pro-Tem. A native of Cody, Wyoming, Simpson earned a Bachelor of Science in Law from the University of Wyoming in 1954 before joining the U.S. Army in its 2nd Armored Division during the final months of the Army Occupation in Germany. Today, Simpson remains active in his family's Cody-based law firm, Simpson, Kepler & Simpson, wherein he spent nearly two decades practicing law before serving in state and national government.

$35, Series is sold out

Robert Gallucci

Topic: Nuclear Challenge from North Korea
and Other Rogue Nations

February 2012

Robert Gallucci is president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He served as Dean of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service for 13 years. From 1998 to 2001 he was appointed by Department of State as Special Envoy to deal with the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. He also currently serves on the U.S. State Department's International Security Advisory Board.

Stuart Rothenberg

Topic: 2012 Elections

February 2012

Stuart Rothenberg is editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan political newsletter covering U.S. House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns. His political commentary is also regularly published in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times, and he is a frequent contributing analyst on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and Nightline. Rothenberg provided in-depth political analysis for NewsHour on PBS during both the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College and a PhD in political science from the University of Connecticut. Rothenberg has taught at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Geoffrey Kemp

Topic: Changing Geopolitical Balance
in the Greater Middle East

February 2012

As Director of Regional Strategic Programs at the newly renamed Center for the National Interest (formerly The Nixon Center) in Washington, D.C.,

Dr. Geoffrey Kemp is intensely focused on U.S. relations with Iran and Iraq and the geopolitics of energy in the Caspian Basin and Persian Gulf. Dr. Kemp served in the White House during the first Reagan Administration and was Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He is the author of the 2010 The East Moves West: India, China and Asia's Growing Presence in the Middle East, an exploration of the growing influence of major Asian countries in the Middle East and its impact on American foreign policy. Dr. Kemp received his Ph.D. in political science at M.I.T. and his Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Oxford University.

$35, Series is sold out

Dr. Frederick W. Kagan

Topic: War Strategy

Sunday, March 4, 7:30 PM

Dr. Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who spends much of his time throughout the year closely monitoring operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. Army General David Petraeus, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to head international forces in Afghanistan, hired Dr. Kagan in 2010 as an expert on fighting corruption. A former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Dr. Kagan is also co-author with his father, Donald Kagan, of While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today. Dr. Kagan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Soviet and East European studies and a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, both from Yale University.

Desmond Lachman

Topic: Europe's Threat to the U.S. Economy

March 2012

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a non-profit policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., and formerly served as Managing Director and Chief Emerging Market Economic Strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. Lachman previously served as Deputy Director in the International Monetary Fund's Policy and Review Department and was active in staff formulation of its policies toward emerging markets. His writings on topics such as economic policy and reform, fund arrangements, import restrictions and exchange rates are regularly published in The Wall Street Journal, Economist, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Lachman received a Pd.D. in economics from Cambridge University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Witwatersrand.

Commissioner Deborah A. Gist

Topic: Education

January 2012

As Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, Deborah A. Gist is responsible for providing information, resources and technical assistance on educational matters to schools and residents of Rhode Island. Gist served as the first state superintendent of education in Washington, D.C., a role tasked with the implementation of critical accountability systems mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Gist holds a master's degree in Public Administration from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and a Master of Arts in Elementary Education from the University of South Florida. Honored twice as "Teacher of the Year" at schools in Fort Worth, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, Gist enjoyed 10 years of direct service to our nation's schools before also becoming a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Department of Education. Her esteemed career and experience in education make Gist an expert on both current policies and future developments in U.S. education.

$35, Series is sold out

Dr. Michael A. Levi

Topic: The Future of Energy

January 2012

An expert on energy, climate change, arms control and nuclear terrorism, Dr. Michael A. Levi is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Director of the CFR program on energy security and climate change. Dr. Levi is a former Director of the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Project and author of On Nuclear Terrorism (University Press). His 2005 monograph, Untapped Potential: U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation with the Islamic World, is the first comprehensive study of science and technology in the Muslim world. Dr. Levi has testified before Congress and presented expert scientific evidence in essays published in Foreign Affairs, Nature, Scientific American and The Wall Street Journal. He holds a Bachelors of Science in mathematical physics from Queen's University, a Master of Arts in physics from Princeton University and a PhD in war studies from the University of London.

The Honorable Paul A. Volcker

The Economy

January 2011

In the course of his career, Volcker worked in the United States Federal Government for almost 30 years, culminating in two terms as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He divided the earlier stages of his career between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Treasury Department, and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Volcker has also served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Accounting Standards Committee and was asked by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to chair the Independent Inquiry into the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program. He was also asked by the President of the World Bank to chair a panel of experts to review the operations of the Department of Institutional Integrity and was chosen by President Elect Obama to head the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board in November 2008. Educated at Princeton, Harvard and the London School of Economics, Volcker is Professor Emeritus of International Economic Policy at Princeton.

Thomas R. Pickering

State Department

February 2011

In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, Thomas R. Pickering was U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Pickering also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Tanzania. He has won the Distinguished Presidential Award and the Department of State's highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. He also served as Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger and served as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Pickering holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. He is currently Vice Chairman at Hills and Company. He retired as the Senior Vice President International Relations and as a member of the Executive Council of The Boeing Company in 2006. Pickering is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili and has some fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, and Russian.

Karim Sadjadpour

Iran

February 2011

Karim Sadjadpour is currently an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was recently the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Washington D.C. and Tehran, where he conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials. Sadjadpour is a regular contributor to BBC TV and Radio, CNN, NPR, and PBS "NewsHour", and has appeared on the "Today Show," "Charlie Rose," "Fox News Sunday," and the "Colbert Report." He contributes regularly to publications such as the Economist, Washington Post, The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and Foreign Policy. Frequently called upon to brief U.S., EU, and Asian officials about Middle Eastern affairs, Sadjadpour regularly testifies before Congress, has lectured at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford Universities, and he has been the recipient of numerous academic awards. He is a Fulbright Scholar, and he has lived in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. He speaks Persian, Spanish, and Italian.

Jonathan Cohn

U.S. Health Care

February 2011

Jonathan Cohn is an American author and journalist whose writings have focused on social welfare and health care. He has been recognized in the pages of the Washington Post as "one of the nation's leading experts on health care policy" and in The New York Times as "one of the best health care writers out there." Formerly the executive editor of The American Prospect, Cohn is currently a senior editor at The New Republicmagazine and a senior fellow at Demos. In May, 2010, he started a new blog for The New Republic called Citizen Cohn and focuses on domestic policy and politics. Cohn is the author of a book, Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price, which won the Harry Chapin Media Award in Books. Before joining The New Republic, Cohn served as executive editor at The American Prospect and has also written for many other publications. He has appeared on many television and radio shows, including MSNBC's "Countdown" and "The Colbert Report."

Senator Judd Gregg

Congressional Budget

February 2011

U.S. Senator Judd Gregg is currently serving his third term in the Senate and is the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee. He is a national leader on fiscal policy, a well known budget expert, and played a major role in rescuing our country from the brink of economic collapse as a chief negotiator of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. He also was the lead sponsor of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and, along with the late Senator Ted Kennedy, co-authored the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In March 2010, Senator Gregg was asked to serve on President Obama's national commission on fiscal responsibility. As a member of the Senate Banking Committee, he is one of the principal negotiators working to modernize our nation's financial regulatory system and ensure that the United States remains a world leader in capital formation. He served as Governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993.

Professor M. Ishaq Nadiri

Afghanistan

February 2011

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Professor M. Ishaq Nadiri is currently the Jay Gould Professor of Economics at New York University. A longstanding member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Professor Nadiri also has served on the Council of Foreign Relations. He was a participant in the 2001 Bonn Agreement which created the Interim Government in Afghanistan, as well as in the Tokyo conference to fund reconstruction aid for Afghanistan. Nadiri recently returned from Afghanistan after spending the past three years in Kabul as the Senior Economic Advisor to President Hamid Karzai. While there, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy and was Co-Chair of the Joint Coordinating and Monitoring Board, which coordinates activities between the international community and the Afghan Government on matters of economic development, governance, and security.

Norman Ornstein

U.S. Politics

February 2011

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, serves as an election analyst for CBS News, and writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and he regularly appears on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "Nightline," and "Charlie Rose." Ornstein serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission and has been part of a working group on the next generation of campaign finance reform. He is credited to be the principal drafter of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. Ornstein has also co-directed a multi-year effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign and is co-director of the AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project.

Thomas W. Lippman

Saudi Arabia

January 2011

Thomas W. Lippman is an award-winning author and journalist who has written about Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy, specializing in Saudi Arabian affairs, U.S.-Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the The Washington Post, and he also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Lippman is the author of numerous magazine articles, book reviews, and op-ed columns about Mideast affairs. He is currently an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and an adjunct scholar of the Middle East Institute. A frequent television and radio commentator on Mideast developments, Lippman has appeared on NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and Fox News, and has also been a consultant to the producers of an A&E documentary on Middle East oil, to the State Department, and to the National Counterterrorism Center.