Westminster Institute talks: Recent Episodes
Westminster Institute talks
We’re a think tank dedicated to individual liberty, highlighting the threats from extremists and radical ideologies. Follow our work at Westminster-Institute.org
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-future-of-ukraine-a-debate/
Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company.
Dr. Bryen has 50 years of experience in government and industry. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration, as the President of Finmeccanica North.
In 1982, Herman Pirchner, Jr. became the founding President of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), a non-profit public policy organization headquartered in Washington, DC.
Under his leadership, AFPC has hosted Washington events for hundreds of foreign officials ranging from the Prime Minister of Malta to the Prime Minister of Russia; conducted hundreds of briefings for Members of Congress and their staffs and, organized dozens of fact-finding missions abroad for current and former senior American officials. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, as well as the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dick Myers are among those who have participated in this program.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/has-wokeness-weakened-the-u-s-military/
Col. (Ret.) Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.
He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia so he is well able to offer the Asian perspective on the strategic challenges China presents to Japan and Taiwan, and how the two of them may face that threat.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/warfare-in-peacetime-proxies-and-state-powers/
Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers
Dr. Christopher Harmon is a professor at The Institute of World Politics.
He formerly held the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University (MCU) in Quantico. Dr. Harmon also directed the counterterrorism course at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. He directed academics in the counter-terrorism program of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Earlier, he was Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy on a congressional staff.
He taught for years on the strategy and policy faculty at the Naval War College, and then served at length as a professor of international relations at the Marine Command and Staff College in Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 Dr. Harmon held an endowed chair for Insurgency and Terrorism Studies at Marine Corps University. He held another chair there from 2010 to 2014, researching low intensity conflicts in Asia and writing A Citizen’s Guide to Terrorism and Counterterrorism.
Dr. Harmon has edited or written eight books, including Toward A Grand Strategy Against Terrorism and The Terrorist Argument. Modern Advocacy and Propaganda. The latter book’s thesis was presented by him at a Westminster Institute lecture back in 2017. He also spoke at the Westminster Institute on How Terrorist Groups End. Dr. Harmon spoke on the subject of his latest book: Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers, published by the Marine Corps University Press.
Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.
In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.
Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.
He is also the author of the best-selling A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy. Other books include Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World, China Attacks, China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality, Journey to the Forbidden China, and Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese.
Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.
Cleo Paskal is a non-resident senior fellow at FDD focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Cleo works with academia, government, the defense community and others in order to better understand, explain, anticipate and resolve today’s complex challenges. She is particularly interested in the strategic implications of the intersection of geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical change.
Cleo has briefed government departments of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, India and many others. She has lectured at, among many others, the US Army War College, Center for Homeland Defense & Security (Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey), Inter-American Defence Board (D.C.), the Royal College of Defence Studies (UK), the National Defence College (India), Centre for National Security Studies (Canadian Forces College), and the National Defence College (Oman). She participates in closed-door meetings with defense, intelligence, national security, and non-government experts who engage in strategic level, unclassified dialogue and research to better anticipate transnational threats.
Cleo is widely published and a regular media commentator. Her books include the award-winning Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map and the best-selling Spielball Erde. Recent academic book chapters and research papers include: “Is New Zealand Creating Global Disruptions” (The Law of the Jungle: How Can New Zealand Navigate Global Disruptions); “India: The Challenge of Reform” (CÉRIUM); “The Modi Phenomenon: Rebooting Indian Foreign Policy” (The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy); and “The ‘Three Geos’” (Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific). In addition, she has contributed chapters to academic books published by Elgar, Routledge and many others and was the Guest Curator/Editor of the influential East-West Center (D.C.) series Oceania in 2018.
In the popular media, Cleo has contributed to The Diplomat, The World Today, The Telegraph (UK), The Independent (UK), South China Morning Post, BBC radio, Australian Financial Review, New Zealand Herald, and Times of India, among many others. She is regularly interviewed by US and international media, including the John Batchelor Show. She is currently North America Special Correspondent for the Sunday Guardian (India).
https://westminster-institute.org/events/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdict-on-covid-restrictions/
Steve H. Hanke is a Senior Fellow, Contributing Editor of The Independent Review, and a Member of the Board of Advisors at the Independent Institute. Hanke is professor of applied economics and founder and co-director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, senior adviser at the Renmin University of China’s International Monetary Research Institute in Beijing, and a special counselor to the Center for Financial Stability in New York. Hanke is also a contributing editor at Central Banking in London and a contributor at National Review. In addition, Hanke is a member of the Charter Council of the Society for Economic Measurement.
In the past, Hanke taught economics at the Colorado School of Mines and at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland in 1976–77, as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1981–82, and as a senior adviser to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in 1984–88. Hanke served as a state counselor to both the Republic of Lithuania in 1994–96 and the Republic of Montenegro in 1999–2003. He was also an adviser to the presidents of Bulgaria in 1997–2002, Venezuela in 1995–96, and Indonesia in 1998. He played an important role in establishing new currency regimes in Argentina, Estonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Montenegro. Hanke has also held senior appointments in the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yugoslavia.
Hanke has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (2003), the Free University of Tbilisi (2010), Istanbul Kültür University (2012), the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2013), Varna Free University (2015), the Universität Liechtenstein (2017), and the D.A. Tsenov Academy of Economics (2018) in recognition of his scholarship on exchange‐rate regimes. He is a distinguished associate of the International Atlantic Economic Society, a distinguished professor at the Universitas Pelita Harapan in Jakarta, Indonesia, a professor asociado (the highest honor awarded to international experts of acknowledged competence) at the Universidad del Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador, a profesor visitante at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (the UPC’s highest academic honor), and the Gottfried von Haberler Professor at the European Center of Austrian Economics Foundation in Liechtenstein. In 1998, he was named one of the 25 most influential people in the world by World Trade Magazine. In 2020, Hanke was named a Knight of the Order of the Flag by Albanian President Ilir Meta.
Hanke is a well‐known currency and commodity trader. Currently, he serves as chairman of the Supervisory Board of Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. in Amsterdam and chairman emeritus of the Friedberg Mercantile Group Inc. in Toronto. During the 1990s, he served as president of Toronto Trust Argentina in Buenos Aires, the world’s best‐performing emerging market mutual fund in 1995.
Hanke received his B.S. in Business Administration (1964) and his Ph.D. in Economics (1969), both from the University of Colorado Boulder.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/what-president-erdogans-election-victory-means-for-turkey-and-the-world/
Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at FDD and an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy.
He is also an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at Marine Corps University (MCU). Prior to joining MCU, Sinan was the Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University (2011-2020). Between 2008-2011 he established the Turkish Studies program at the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies. He continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Sinan was born in Turkey and educated in the United Kingdom. He was previously an instructor at Sabanci University between 2004-2008 and completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the same institution between 2007-2008. Distinct from his articles and opinion editorials, his book titled Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party: Secularism and Nationalism (Routledge, January 2009) focuses on the electoral weakness of the Republican People’s Party.
He obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2007 in the field of Political Science. He continues to author scholarly articles, opinion pieces and book chapters on contemporary Turkish politics and foreign policy, as well as participate in media appearances.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/should-the-u-s-or-europe-make-nato-great-again/
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times.
Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. He holds a JD from Stanford University.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/are-japan-australia-the-united-states-and-others-prepared-militarily-to-meet-the-ccp-threat/
Col. (Ret.) Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.
He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia so he is well able to offer the Asian perspective on the strategic challenges China presents to Japan and Taiwan, and how the two of them may face that threat.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/how-to-think-strategically-about-russia-and-china/
Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century; America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics, and War; and Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey through the Second World War. He is a contributor to Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics and The Conduct of American Foreign Policy Debated. He has also written introductions to four books on U.S. foreign policy.
His articles and book reviews on historical and foreign policy topics have appeared in Orbis, the University Bookman, Joint Force Quarterly, The Diplomat, American Diplomacy, the Asian Review of Books, Strategic Review, National Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Human Rights Review, the Claremont Review of Books, the Washington Times, the South China Morning Post, the International Social Science Review, Caixin Online, Real Clear History, and The American Spectator.
He is an Assistant United States Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, and a former contributing editor to American Diplomacy.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/understanding-chinese-engagement-in-latin-america/
Dr. R. Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region.
Dr. Ellis has published over 400 works, including the 2009 book China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, the 2013 book The Strategic Dimension of Chinese Engagement with Latin America, the 2014 book China on the Ground in Latin America, and the 2018 book Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. He most recent book is China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy?
Dr. Ellis previously served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (S/P) with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean (WHA), as well as International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) issues.
Dr. Ellis has also been awarded the Order of Military Merit José María Córdova by the Colombian government for his scholarship on security issues in the region.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-russia-ukraine-conflict-is-there-a-way-out/
Dr. Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company. Currently, Dr. Bryen is a Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy, the Center for Security Policy.
He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. He is the author of Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers, and of three volumes of Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy. Dr. Bryen was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/what-chinas-handling-of-the-crisis-tells-us-about-the-ccp/
Miles Yu is a senior fellow and director of the China Center at Hudson Institute. He is also a professor of East Asia and military and naval history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Dr. Yu specializes in Chinese military and strategic culture, US and Chinese military and diplomatic history, and US policy toward China.
Dr. Yu joined the Trump administration and served as the China policy adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In that capacity, he advised the secretary on all China-related issues, helped overhaul US policy toward China, and participated in key US government interagency deliberations on major policy and government actions with regard to China and other East Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. He is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution as a member of the Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group. From 2011 to 2016, he wrote the weekly column “Inside China” for the Washington Times. Since 1996, he has been an editorial consultant to Radio Free Asia, and a contributor to various media outlets including the Wall Street Journal and PBS News Hour.
Dr. Yu has published widely on topics in his field. His books include OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (Yale University Press, 1997) and The Dragon’s War: Allied Operations and the Fate of China, 1937–1947 (Naval Institute Press, 2006). He is the author of many scholarly articles on China, military and intelligence history, and newspaper columns about contemporary Chinese political and military affairs. His numerous awards include the US Naval Academy’s top researcher award, US Navy Special Action Awards, and US Navy Meritorious Service Award.
Dr. Yu received a doctorate in history from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree from Swarthmore College, and a bachelor’s degree from Nankai University.
The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI (Fr. Joseph Fessio and Robert Royal, January 12, 2023)
Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J. was a doctoral student under Benedict XVI when the future Pope was known as Joseph Ratzinger, a professor and priest at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Father Fessio taught philosophy and theology at Gonzaga University, the University of Santa Clara, and at the University of San Francisco. He also served as Chancellor at Ave Maria University. In 1978, he founded Ignatius Press, a major Catholic publisher that has brought out most of the English translations of the works of Cardinal Ratzinger and later Benedict XVI. He is also the publisher of the Catholic World Report.
Dr. Robert Royal is the founder and president of Faith & Reason Institute in Washington D.C. and editor-in-chief of “The Catholic Thing,” a publication he founded with Michael Novak in 2008. Dr. Royal holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. The author of many books, his most recent ones include Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the 20th Century.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/was-americas-founding-fatally-flawed-by-the-provenance-of-its-ideas/
In early December, Westminster director Robert Reilly gave a talk to the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. Troubled by the ample evidence of a moral decline in the United States, some Christian and other thinkers trace the problem to what they see as a fatal flaw in the American Founding: a reliance on the philosophical principles of the Enlightenment – to wit, the assertion of radical individual autonomy. Reilly, the author of America on Trial, disagrees. He argues that the genealogy of the ideas that made the founding conceivable is grounded in classical Greek philosophy, Jewish revelation, and Christianity. The founders’ principles come from pre-Enlightenment sources. They are compatible with—and indeed derived from—the tradition of respect for Reason and Revelation, Church and State, developed and refined by philosophers of the Middle Ages. After a period of state absolutism, the founders restored these principles. Reilly shows on what basis political scientist Ellis Sandoz could claim that “the whole of medieval Christian constitutional and political theory . . . lay squarely behind the American determination [to achieve independence].”
The Westminster Institute is grateful to the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture for the use of this video.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/will-the-war-in-ukraine-be-a-turning-point-for-the-east-mediterranean/
Dr. Basem Shabb served in the Lebanese Parliament from 2005 to 2018. During his tenure, he served on several committees addressing important challenges such as defense, economic policy, and human rights. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as the Congressional US-Lebanon Friendship Caucus. He was a parliamentary representative at the EU-Lebanese security committee on illicit firearms, small arms and light weapons, and served as Lebanon’s representative at the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law.
Additionally, Dr. Shabb was part of the Lebanese parliamentary delegation that visited Norway to gather more information about oil and gas exploration and legislation. He is a surgeon and a clinical associate professor of surgery at the Lebanese American University. He is a founding member of the Euro-Asian Bridge Society of Cardiac Surgeons and as well as that of the Lebanese Association for Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Bioethics.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/will-negotiations-end-the-war-in-ukraine/
Emma Ashford is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. She works on a variety of issues related to the future of U.S foreign policy, international security, and the politics of global energy markets. She has expertise in the politics of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. Ashford is also a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.
Her first book, Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2022, and explored the international security ramifications of oil production and export in states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela.
Prior to joining the Stimson Center, Ashford was a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative, which focused on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy. She was also a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, where she worked on a variety of issues including the US-Saudi relationship, sanctions policy, and US policy towards Russia, and US foreign policy and grand strategy more broadly.
Ashford writes a bi-weekly column, “It’s Debatable,” for Foreign Policy, and her long-form writing has been featured in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Texas National Security Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the York Times, the Washington Post, the National Interest, and War on the Rocks, among others. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and holds a PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-world-turned-upside-down/
Clyde Prestowitz is a leading analyst and commentator on foreign affairs, globalization, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Mexico, technology, and international economics. He has spent many years living and working abroad as a sales, marketing, and corporate planning manager for companies like Scott Paper and American Can Company in Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Hong Kong.
He was a White House adviser in the Obama administration and served as Vice Chairman of President Clinton’s Commission on Trade and Investment in the Asia-Pacific region. He was also a director of the Export Import Bank of the United States under Clinton and served at the same time as the President of the Pacific Basin Economic Council. Earlier, during the Reagan Administration he served as Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce with a special focus on Japan with which he was the lead U.S. negotiator. He was a leader of the first U.S. Trade Mission to China in 1982 and helped to arrive at agreements that enabled U.S. companies to establish operations in China.
Clyde Prestowitz writes frequently for the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, The Washington Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Prospect, The Spectator, and other leading journals and newspapers.
Aside from writing, he has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Board of Intel under Andy Grove, as an advisor to FedEx Chairman Fred Smith, as an advisor to former AIG Chairman Hang Greenberg, member of the Board of Lanxide Corporation, and advisor to Form Factor Inc.
His major books are: Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan (1988), Rogue Nation (2003), Five Billion New Capitalists: How Wealth and Power are Flowing to the East (2005), The Betrayal of American Prosperity (2010) and Japan Restored (2016). His new book is The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/is-the-united-states-in-terminal-decline-an-assessment/
Larry P. Arnn is the 12th president of Hillsdale College, where he is also a professor of politics and history. He received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School. He also studied at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. From 1985 to 2000, he served as president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. In 1996, he was the founding chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibited racial preferences in state hiring, contracting, and admissions.
Dr. Arnn is on the board of directors of The Heritage Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Center of Claremont McKenna College, the Philadelphia Society, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Claremont Institute. He served on the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors for two years, for which he earned the Department of the Army’s “Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.” In 2015, he received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Dr. Arnn is the author of three books: Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education; The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It; and Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/looking-for-inflation-in-all-the-wrong-places/
Steve H. Hanke is a professor of applied economics and founder and co-director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University. Hanke is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, a senior adviser at the Renmin University of China’s International Monetary Research Institute in Beijing, and a special counselor to the Center for Financial Stability in New York. Hanke is also a contributing editor at Central Banking in London and a contributor at National Review. In addition, Hanke is a member of the charter council of the Society for Economic Measurement and of the Euromoney Country Risk’s experts panel. In the past, Hanke taught economics at the Colorado School of Mines and at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland from 1976 to 1977, as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1981 to 1982, and as a senior adviser to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress from 1984 to 1988. Hanke served as a state counselor to both the Republic of Lithuania from 1994 to 1996 and the Republic of Montenegro from 1999 to 2003. He was also an adviser to the presidents of Bulgaria from 1997 to 2002, Venezuela from 1995 to 1996, and Indonesia in 1998. He played an important role in establishing new currency regimes in Argentina, Estonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Montenegro. Hanke has also held senior appointments in the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yugoslavia. Hanke is a well‐known currency and commodity trader. Currently, he serves as chairman of the supervisory board of Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. in Amsterdam and chairman emeritus of the Friedberg Mercantile Group Inc. in Toronto. During the 1990s, he served as president of Toronto Trust Argentina in Buenos Aires, the world’s best‐performing emerging market mutual fund in 1995. Hanke’s most recent books are Currency Boards: Volume 1. Theory and Policy (2020), Currency Boards: Volume 2. Studies on Selected European Countries (2020), Currency Boards for Developing Countries: A Handbook (2021), Public Debt Sustainability: International Perspectives (2022), and The Hong Kong Linked Rate Mechanism: Monetary Lessons for Economic Development (2022).
https://westminster-institute.org/events/europes-energy-crisis/
Peter Hoekstra was U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration, and he served eighteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 2nd District in Michigan. He served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors and a Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
During his tenure as Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Hague hosted the Department of State Global Entrepreneurial Summit in June of 2019, which was attended by over 2000 entrepreneurs, investors, and other business leaders. The Dutch Parliament created the American Friendship Group at his urging. He continues to aggressively and effectively promote United States foreign policy goals and objectives.
Pete served in the United States Congress for 18 years, representing Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District from 1993 to 2011. He served as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 until January 2007. He was a member of the Gang of Eight from 2004 until 2011 receiving the most highly classified information available in the U.S. government.
Prior to his service in the U.S. Congress, Pete had a successful career at Herman Miller, Inc. of Zeeland, Michigan—a company frequently cited as one of the most admired in America and one of the best places to work. Over his 15 year career at Herman Miller, Pete worked in a variety of positions rising through the ranks to become the Vice President of Marketing.
In 2008, Pete was appointed as an Officer in the Order of the Orange-Nassau, a royal honor from the Dutch government. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) awarded Pete with its “Agency Seal Medal” and the Director of National Intelligence awarded him with the “National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal”.
Pete earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hope College and a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Michigan.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-legacy-of-gorbachev/
David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
https://westminster-institute.org/events/what-is-the-state-of-america/
Ambassador Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice-President of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). He was previously President of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. (MBN), which provides news and information in Arabic to the Middle East and North Africa. He is a member of the board of directors at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security (CCHS) at George Washington University. He is also a non-resident Fellow in Middle East Politics and Media at the TRENDS research and advisory center in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy. He worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency and is a graduate of Georgetown University. In 1994, he joined IRD to found its United Methodist project (UMAction) and became IRD President in 2009. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church (2008), Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century: From William McKinley to 9/11 (2012), and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War (2015).
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-evolution-of-chinas-grand-strategy-as-it-applies-to-today/
Andrew Latham is a professor of International Relations specializing in the politics of international conflict and security. He teaches courses on international security, Chinese foreign policy, war and peace in the Middle East, Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the World Wars. He was formerly the Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament Fellow at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and a lecturer at the Canadian Armed Forces School of Aerospace Studies. Professor Latham regularly writes — and speaks to the media and community groups — about war, disarmament, and strategic affairs, with a special focus on issues related to arms control and weapons of mass destruction (North Korea), great power rivalries (U.S. vs. China; U.S. vs. Russia), conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the transformation of war (cybersecurity, space, hybrid war), and U.S. defense policy.
Read the transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-legacy-of-shinzo-abe-and-the-future-of-the-indo-pacific/
Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/blasphemy-murders-in-nigeria/
Douglas Burton is a veteran reporter and news content producer based in Greenbelt, Maryland. In recent years he has put his energies into reporting terrorism in Nigeria, where he mentors a team of grassroots conflict reporters. Burton and some of his team were featured in a Fox Nation documentary on Nigeria produced by war correspondent Lara Logan in 2021. Burton put in decades as an assignment editor with the Washington Times corporation before heading to Iraq to help the occupation effort from 2005 dot 2007 and later reported the campaign to remove Islamic State from its base in Mosul, Iraq. Burton switched to Nigerian terrorism in 2019.
Masara Kim, 35, is a widely watched conflict reporter in Jos, the capital of Plateau State, from which he has contributed as a reporter to Fox Nation, The Epoch Times and other news media. Kim overcame a lost limb in his childhood and manages his print and photography output with only one arm. He recently published a groundbreaking investigation of mass rape as a tool of governance by terrorists in so-called ungoverned spaces of Nigeria’s Northwestern States.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-economic-consequences-of-the-russia-ukraine-war/
David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. He is the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL). According to the Claremont Review of Books, the “Spengler” columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions. His analyses of global events have become highly regarded. Former C.I.A. National Intelligence Council Vice Chairman Herbert E. Meyer said, “Ask anyone in the intelligence business to name the world’s most brilliant intelligence service, and we will all give the same answer: Spengler. David P. Goldman’s ‘Spengler’ columns provide more insight than the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad combined.” Goldman concealed his identity under the “Spengler” pseudonym until 2009, when he revealed his identity in the Asia Times article, “And Spengler is…” and the First Things article “Confessions of a Coward”.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-war-in-ukraine-how-will-it-end/
Andrew Latham is a professor of International Relations specializing in the politics of international conflict and security. He teaches courses on international security, Chinese foreign policy, war and peace in the Middle East, Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the World Wars. He was formerly the Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament Fellow at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and a lecturer at the Canadian Armed Forces School of Aerospace Studies. Professor Latham regularly writes — and speaks to the media and community groups — about war, disarmament, and strategic affairs, with a special focus on issues related to arms control and weapons of mass destruction (North Korea), great power rivalries (U.S. vs. China; U.S. vs. Russia), conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the transformation of war (cybersecurity, space, hybrid war), and U.S. defense policy.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-war-in-ukraine-how-will-it-end/
Andrew Latham is a professor of International Relations specializing in the politics of international conflict and security. He teaches courses on international security, Chinese foreign policy, war and peace in the Middle East, Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific Region, and the World Wars. He was formerly the Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament Fellow at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and a lecturer at the Canadian Armed Forces School of Aerospace Studies. Professor Latham regularly writes — and speaks to the media and community groups — about war, disarmament, and strategic affairs, with a special focus on issues related to arms control and weapons of mass destruction (North Korea), great power rivalries (U.S. vs. China; U.S. vs. Russia), conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the transformation of war (cybersecurity, space, hybrid war), and U.S. defense policy.
Dr. Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company. Currently, Dr. Bryen is a Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy, the Center for Security Policy. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. He is the author of Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers, and of three volumes of Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy. Dr. Bryen was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
He previously spoke at Westminster on the subject of: “Russia and Ukraine: What’s Next?“
About the study A Center for Security Policy specially organized Panel of Experts, all of whom have extensive experience in the Pacific and with the US Pacific command, believe the US can deter China from attacking Taiwan. The Panel’s work resulted in 34 Findings and Recommendations in the study Stopping a Taiwan Invasion. The proposals, if adopted, will discourage any attack from China and strengthen peace and security in the Pacific.
The Panel undertook the task of reviewing Pacific security in light of the constant threats to Taiwan coming from Beijing, the massing of air and naval power around the island, and “think tank” reports, now debunked by the Panel, that the US was weak and unable to maintain the balance of power around Taiwan, Japan, Korea and elsewhere in the Pacific.
The Findings and Recommendation are supported by a paper reviewing the disposition of US, allied and friendly forces in the region including US Air Force, US Navy, US Marines and US Army components.
Lt. Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges holds the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He joined CEPA in February 2018. A native of Quincy, Florida, General Hodges graduated from the United States Military Academy in May 1980 and was commissioned in the Infantry. After his first assignment as an Infantry Lieutenant in Garlstedt, Germany, he commanded Infantry units at the Company, Battalion, and Brigade levels in the 101st Airborne Division, including Command of the First Brigade Combat Team “Bastogne” of the 101st Airborne Division in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2003-2004). His other operational assignments include Chief of Operations for Multi-National Corps-Iraq in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2005-2006) and Director of Operations, Regional Command South in Kandahar, Afghanistan (2009-2010). General Hodges has also served in a variety of Joint and Army Staff positions to include Tactics Instructor; Chief of Plans, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea; Aide-de-Camp to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Chief of Staff, XVIII Airborne Corps; Director of the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell on the Joint Staff; Chief of Legislative Liaison for the United States Army; and Commander, NATO Allied Land Command (İzmir, Turkey). His last military assignment was as Commanding General, United States Army Europe (Wiesbaden, Germany) from 2014 to 2017. He retired from the U.S. Army in January 2018.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/isis-from-near-state-to-persistent-problem/
David Des Roches is an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies. Prior to this, he was the director responsible for defense policy concerning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Prior to this assignment, he has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the DoD Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, as the senior country director for Pakistan, as the NATO operations director, and as the deputy director for peacekeeping. His first job in government was as a special assistant for strategy and later as the international law enforcement analyst in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
An Airborne Ranger in the Army Reserve, he was awarded the Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan. He has commanded conventional and special operations parachute units and has served on the US Special Operations Command staff as well as on the Joint Staff.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-chinese-russian-relationship-its-complicated/
Dean Cheng is a Senior Research Fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, where he specializes in China’s military and foreign policy, in particular its relationship with the rest of Asia and with the United States. He is fluent in Chinese. Prior to joining Heritage, he was a senior analyst with the China Studies division of the Center for Naval Analyses, where he specialized on Chinese military issues and authored studies on Chinese military doctrine, Chinese mobilization concepts, and Chinese space capabilities. Before joining CNA, he was a senior analyst at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He also served as an analyst with the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and Space Division, where he studied the Chinese defense industrial complex. Dean is the author of Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations. He studied at Princeton University and at MIT.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/western-survival-depends-on-the-sacred/
David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. He is the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL). According to the Claremont Review of Books, the “Spengler” columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions.
His analyses of global events have become highly regarded. Former C.I.A. National Intelligence Council Vice Chairman Herbert E. Meyer said, “Ask anyone in the intelligence business to name the world’s most brilliant intelligence service, and we will all give the same answer: Spengler. David P. Goldman’s ‘Spengler’ columns provide more insight than the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad combined.” Goldman concealed his identity under the “Spengler” pseudonym until 2009, when he revealed his identity in the Asia Times article, “And Spengler is…” and the First Things article “Confessions of a Coward”.
Goldman regularly appears as a guest on CNBC’s Larry Kudlow Program, where he has been an outspoken critic of Federal Reserve efforts to resuscitate the American economy. He is the author of How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam is Dying Too) and It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations.
He previously spoke at Westminster on the subject of: "Will China overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower?"
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-historical-context-of-the-ukrainian-conflict/
Joseph Adamo Mussomeli was Ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia from November 2010 until January 2015 and the Ambassador to the Royal Kingdom of Cambodia from June 2005 to August 2008. He was the Assistant Chief of Mission in Kabul from May 2009 to May 2010. Prior to that assignment, Mr. Mussomeli served as the Director of Entry Level Career Development and Assignments. He received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2009 and the Raphel Award in 2010 for developing, mentoring, and supporting his staff. Since his retirement in April 2015 he has given lectures on a variety of topics including leadership, foreign policy, and interagency cooperation at FSI, DOD, and various universities.
Mr. Mussomeli was born in New York City on May 26, 1952. He graduated from Camden Catholic High School in 1970. He then went to Rutgers University for two years before dropping out and becoming an upholsterer, and then spending several months hitch-hiking through Europe. Upon returning to the United States, he attended Trenton State College and graduated summa cum laude in 1975, earning a BA in Political Science. In 1978, he earned a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers Law School. Following law school Mr. Mussomeli served as a law clerk to the Appellate Court of New Jersey from 1978-1979, and then worked as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of New Jersey.
Mr. Mussomeli entered the Foreign Service in September 1980 and began his career serving in Cairo, Egypt, as a General Service Officer. Following Cairo, Mr. Mussomeli served in the Department as staff assistant to the Undersecretary for Security Assistance. He then served in Manila, Philippines as a consular officer from 1984-1986. His subsequent tours included: North Korea Desk Officer (1986-1988), Senior Watch Officer (1989-1990), Economic Counselor in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1990-1992), Office of Inspector General (1992-1994), Political Counselor in Rabat, Morocco (1995-1998), Deputy Chief of Mission in Manama, Bahrain (1998-2001), and as a member of the Senior Seminar (2001-2002). He served as Deputy Chief of Mission in the Philippines (2002-2005).
https://westminster-institute.org/events/one-kim-to-rule-them-all/
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development generally, and more specifically on international security in the Korean peninsula and Asia. Domestically, he focuses on poverty and social well-being. Dr. Eberstadt is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).
His many books and monographs include “Poverty in China” (IDI, 1979); “The Tyranny of Numbers” (AEI Press, 1995); “The End of North Korea” (AEI Press, 1999); “The Poverty of the Poverty Rate” (AEI Press, 2008); and “Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis” (NBR, 2010). His latest book is “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis” (Templeton Press, 2016).
He has offered invited testimony before Congress on numerous occasions and has served as consultant or adviser for a variety of units within the US government. His appearances on radio and television range from NPR to CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
Mr. Eberstadt has a PhD in political economy and government, an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government, and an AB from Harvard University. In addition, he holds a master of science from the London School of Economics.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/russia-and-ukraine-whats-next/
Dr. Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company. Currently, Dr. Bryen is a Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy, the Center for Security Policy. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. He is the author of Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers, and of three volumes of Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy. Dr. Bryen was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/make-peace-not-war-with-russia/
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is the Executive Director of Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional Advisory Board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse (EMP), cyber-attack, mass destruction terrorism and other threats to civilian critical infrastructures on an accelerated basis. Dr. Pry is also the Director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, a Congressional Advisory Board dedicated to developing policies to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction. In 2015, Dr. Pry testified in Denver on Colorado’s first attempt to pass EMP/GMD legislation. Dr. Pry also continues to serve on the Congressional EMP Commission, like his fellow commissioners, despite the current lack of Congressional funding.
Dr. Pry often appears on TV and radio as an expert on national security issues. The BBC made his book War Scare into a two-hour TV documentary titled Soviet War Scare 1983. His book Electric Armageddon was the basis for another TV documentary by National Geographic titled Electronic Armageddon. He also holds a certification in nuclear weapons design.
Dr. Pry has served as contributing editor on several articles for Family Security Matters and has written numerous articles regarding current events and their impact on America.
Dr. Pry served on the staffs of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (2008-2009); the Commission on the New Strategic Posture of the United States (2006-2008); and the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack (2001-2008). He served as Professional Staff on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) of the U.S. Congress, with portfolios in nuclear strategy, WMD, Russia, China, NATO, the Middle East, Intelligence, and Terrorism (1995-2001).
While serving on the HASC, Dr. Pry was chief advisor to the Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the Vice Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and to the Chairman of the Terrorism Panel. Dr. Pry played a key role in running hearings in Congress that warned terrorists and rogue states could pose an EMP threat; establishing the Congressional EMP Commission; helping the Commission develop plans to protect the United States from EMP; and working closely with senior scientists who first discovered the nuclear EMP phenomenon.
Dr. Pry was an Intelligence Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency responsible for analyzing Soviet and Russian nuclear strategy, operational plans, military doctrine, threat perceptions, and developing U.S. paradigms for strategic warning (1985-1995). He also served as a Verification Analyst at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency responsible for assessing Soviet compliance with strategic and military arms control treaties (1984-1985).
Dr. Aykan Erdemir, senior director of FDD’s Turkey program, is a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011 to 2015) who served in the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, EU Harmonization Committee, and the Ad Hoc Parliamentary Committee on the IT Sector and the Internet.
As an outspoken defender of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedoms in the Middle East, Aykan has been at the forefront of the struggle against religious persecution, hate crimes, and hate speech in Turkey. He is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and a drafter of and signatory to the Oslo Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief (2014), as well as a signatory legislator to the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism.
He has edited seven books, including Rethinking Global Migration: Practices, Policies, and Discourses in the European Neighbourhood (KORA) and Social Dynamics of Global Terrorism: Risk and Prevention Policies (IOS Press). He is co-author of the 2016 book Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge).
On April 27, 2016, Aykan was awarded the Stefanus Prize for Religious Freedom in recognition of his advocacy for minority rights and religious freedoms. In March 2015, he was awarded a distinguished fellowship at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Law and Public Policy. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Hill, Politico Europe, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, War On The Rocks, The Cipher Brief, Business Insider, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Hurriyet Daily News, Ahram Online, and The Times of Israel.
After completing his BA in International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, Aykan received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, where his doctoral dissertation was entitled, “Incorporating Alevis: The Transformation of Governance and Faith-based Collective Action in Turkey.” He also worked as a doctoral fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a research associate at the University of Oxford’s Center on Migration, Policy and Society.
He previously addressed the Westminster Institute on the subjects of Hagia Sophia: The Latest Target of Erdogan’s Supremacist Policies (2020) and How Erdogan Consolidates Power: The Weaponization of Turkish Media and the Scapegoating of Minorities (2018).
Andrei Illarionov is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. From 2000 to 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the president’s personal representative in the G-8. Dr. Illarionov was the driving force behind the adoption of a 13% flat income tax, the Russia’s government’s creation of a Stabilization Fund for windfall oil revenues, reduction in the size of government and the early repayment of Russia’s foreign debt. At the end of 2005, he resigned from his post as a Presidential Advisor for what he said were three main reasons: the transformation of Russia into a politically non-free country, the capture of the Russian state by the corporation of secret police officers (“siloviki”), and horrific corruption within the Russian leadership. Earlier, in 1992, Dr. Illarionov had served as an Economic Advisor to Russia’s Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. And from 1993 to 94 he was Chief Economic Advisor to Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/impact-of-the-american-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-on-central-asia/
S. Frederick Starr is the founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, a joint transatlantic research and policy center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Institute (AFPC) in Washington (where Starr is Research Professor) and the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. Dr. Starr is Distinguished Fellow for Eurasia at AFPC.
Hassan Mneimneh is Principal at Middle East Alternatives in Washington DC. He is a Scholar at the Middle East Institute and Contributing Editor at Fikra Forum at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was previously Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Director of the Center for Global Engagement at the Institute for American Values. Between 1999 and 2008, Mneimneh assumed leading functions at the Iraq Memory Foundation, the Iraq Foundation, and the Iraq Research and Documentation Project. Mneimneh specializes in the affairs of the Middle East, North Africa, and the wider Islamic world with a particular emphasis on radicalism and factionalism. In previous capacities, he has focused on the significance of socio-political and cultural developments in the MENA region to US and European policies; assessed civil reaction to radicalizing tendencies in Muslim societies; and studied the evolution, record, and prospects of radical Islamist formations worldwide. He has written, in English, Arabic, and French, on political, cultural, historical, and intellectual questions concerning the Arab and Muslim worlds.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-risks-of-investing-in-china/
Dennis Kwok was a founding member of the Civic Party in Hong Kong. Formed in 2006, Civic Party was one of the key political parties in Hong Kong that championed for the protection of the rule of law, greater democracy and human rights. In 2012, Kwok was elected as the member of the Legislative Council (LegCo) representing the Hong Kong legal profession. The legislature in Hong Kong is divided into geographical seats and functional seats. Each member of the legal profession has one vote and is entitled to elect their representative in LegCo.
Johnny Patterson is the co-founder and Policy Director of Hong Kong Watch. Johnny was the founding Director of the organisation between 2017 and 2020, and is now responsible for overseeing our research and policy work. He has authored a number of Hong Kong Watch’s in-depth reports, including our research on why Hong Kong matters to China as an international financial hub and our report on the abuse of the Public Order Ordinance. He is a regular commentator on Hong Kong in international media.
SHOW LESSMustafa Akyol is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. Since 2013, he has also been a frequent opinion writer for the New York Times, covering politics and religion in the Muslim world. He is the author several books, most recently "Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance" (2021), and “Why, As a Muslim, I Defend Liberty.” In July 2021, the Prospect Magazine of the UK listed him among “The world’s top 50 thinkers.”
Kerry K. Gershaneck has been a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, for the past three years. He is an Adjunct Professor with University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis in Australia; a member of The Research Institute for Japan-U.S.-Taiwan Relations security think tank; and the Senior Fellow, Regional Security & Geopolitical Trends, Global Risk Mitigation Foundation in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy and the Royal Thai Naval Academy as well as a Senior Research Associate at the Thammasat University Faculty of Law (CPG) in Thailand for a total of eight years.
Read the transcript and get the books:
Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to "Win Without Fighting" https://amzn.to/31muvth
Media Warfare: Taiwan's Battle for the Cognitive Domain https://amzn.to/31y38N7
Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
Farahnaz Ispahani is a Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC and the author of the book Purifying The Land of The Pure: The History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities (Oxford University Press, 2017). In 2015, she was a Reagan-Fascell Scholar at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she worked on women and extremist groups with a particular focus on the women of ISIS.
A Pakistani politician, Ispahani served as a Member of Parliament and Media Advisor to the President of Pakistan from 2008-2012. She returned to Pakistan with Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 after opposing the Musharraf dictatorship in the preceding years. In Parliament she focused on the issues of terrorism, human rights, gender based violence, minority rights and US-Pakistan relations. The most notable pieces of legislation enacted with her active support include those relating to Women’s Harassment in the Workplace and Acid Crimes and Control, which made disfiguring of women by throwing acid at them a major crime. She was also a member of the Women’s caucus in the 13th National Assembly, which was instrumental in introducing more legislation on women’s issues than has ever been done before during a single parliamentary term.
Ms. Ispahani spent the formative years of her career as a print and television journalist. Her last journalistic position was as Executive Producer and Managing Editor of Voice of America’s Urdu TV. She has also worked at ABC News, CNN and MSNBC.
She has contributed opinion pieces to The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The National Review, and others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxAOCDKdsPw&ab_channel=WestminsterInstitute
In late 2020 the U.S. State Department added Nigeria to its list of Countries of Particular Concern, which names governments that have “engaged in or tolerated systematic ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.” Apparently, Nigeria is the first democracy ever added to the list. Also, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has warned of a potential “Christian genocide.” Joining me today to discuss this troubling situation are two guests. Robert Destro is Professor of Law and founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Religion at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. He has recently served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor. Professor Destro also served as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He is the co-author of the book Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society. Joining us from Nigeria, Mark Jacob is a barrister in Abuja. He is the former Attorney General of Kaduna State and former national legal adviser of the then-ruling People Democratic Party from 2007 to 2009 afterwards he was director of legal services federal airports authority. He is currently engaged in private legal practice and advocacy for the rights of minority indigenous people.
Ambassador Ali Jalali served as Afghanistan's Interior Minister from 2003 to 2005, overseeing the creation of a trained force of 50,000 Afghan National Police and 12,000 border police to work effectively in counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and criminal investigation. He also served as Afghan Ambassador to Germany and Designated Special Envoy to NATO. He is a Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. His most recent book is a military history of Afghanistan from the Great Game to the Global War on Terror. A former official in the Afghan Army, Col. Jalali served as a top military planner with the Afghan resistance after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Dr. Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company. Currently, Dr. Bryen is a Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy, the Center for Security Policy. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. He is the author of Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers, and of three volumes of Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy. Dr. Bryen was twice awarded the Defense Department's highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
The Hundredth Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party – Westminster Institute (westminster-institute.org)
Chen Guangcheng is a blind Chinese civil rights activist, known internationally as “the barefoot lawyer.” Blind since infancy, illiterate until his late teens, he taught himself law and became a fierce advocate for his country’s voiceless poor.
For his trouble, he spent more than four years in prison on charges of “disturbing public order” and was then held under strict house arrest in his heavily guarded home in Shandong province from 2010 to 2012. In a daring escape that captured worldwide headlines, he fled to the U.S. embassy in Beijing. After high-level negotiations between the U.S. and China, Mr. Chen was allowed to leave for America. Since 2013, he has been a senior research fellow at Catholic University of America, the Witherspoon Institute, and the Lantos Foundation.
Chen has written a riveting memoir and a revealing portrait of modern China, titled The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China. The Atlantic Monthly said, “This exceptional book will join the ranks of classic accounts of individual bravery, principle, and vision in the face of cruelty and repression. Chen Guangcheng is known around the world for the daring of his escape from captivity; as The Barefoot Lawyer makes clear, his journey and the accomplishments before that were at least as remarkable. Anyone who wants to understand the struggle for China’s future, being waged inside that country and by friends of China around the world, will want to read this book.”
Andrei Illarionov is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. From 2000 to 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the president’s personal representative in the G-8. Dr. Illarionov was the driving force behind the adoption of a 13% flat income tax, the Russia’s government’s creation of a Stabilization Fund for windfall oil revenues, reduction in the size of government and the early repayment of Russia’s foreign debt. At the end of 2005, he resigned from his post as a Presidential Advisor for what he said were three main reasons: the transformation of Russia into a politically non-free country, the capture of the Russian state by the corporation of secret police officers (“siloviki”), and horrific corruption within the Russian leadership. Earlier, in 1992, Dr. Illarionov had served as an Economic Advisor to Russia’s Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. And from 1993 to 94 he was Chief Economic Advisor to Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin. Dr. Illarionov has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies. He received his PhD from St. Petersburg University in 1987.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtzHLM5Aocc
Robert Spalding is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work focuses on U.S.-China relations, economic and national security, and the Asia-Pacific military balance. Spalding has served in senior positions of strategy and diplomacy within the Defense and State Departments for more than 26 years, and is an accomplished innovator in government and a national security policy strategist. As Senior Director for Strategy to the President, he was the chief architect of the framework for national competition in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS). He has earned recognition for his knowledge of Chinese economic competition, cyber warfare, and political influence, as well as for his ability to forecast global trends and develop innovative solutions. Spalding’s relationship with business leaders, fostered during his time as a Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, allowed him to recommend pragmatic solutions to complex foreign policy and national security issues, which are driving positive economic outcomes for the nation. Spalding’s groundbreaking work on competition in Secure 5G has reset the global environment for the next phase of cyber security in the information age. Spalding is a skilled combat leader, promoter of technological advances to achieve improved unit performance, and a seasoned diplomat. Under Spalding’s leadership, the 509th Operations Group—the nation’s only B-2 Stealth Bomber unit—experienced unprecedented technological and operational advances. Spalding’s demonstrated acumen for solving complex technological issues to achieve operational success, was demonstrated when he led a low-cost rapid-integration project for a secure global communications capability in the B-2, achieving tremendous results at almost no cost to the government. As commander, he led forces in the air and on the ground in Libya and Iraq. During the UUV Incident of 2016, Spalding averted a diplomatic crisis by negotiating with the Chinese PLA for the return of the UUV, without the aid of a translator. Spalding has written extensively on national security matters. He is currently working on a book concerning national competition in the 21st Century. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, War on the Rocks, FedTech Magazine, Defense One, The Diplomat, and other edited volumes. His Air Power Journal article on America’s Two Air Forces is frequently used in the West Point curriculum. Spalding is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has lectured globally, including engagements at the Naval War College, National Defense University, Air War College, Columbia University, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and other Professional Military Educational institutions. Spalding received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Agricultural Business from California State University, Fresno, and holds a doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was a distinguished graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, and is fluent in Chinese Mandarin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbL3lw7cewc
Lieutenant General (Retired) Ben Hodges holds the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He joined CEPA in February 2018. A native of Quincy, Florida, General Hodges graduated from the United States Military Academy in May 1980 and was commissioned in the Infantry.
After his first assignment as an Infantry Lieutenant in Garlstedt, Germany, he commanded Infantry units at the Company, Battalion, and Brigade levels in the 101st Airborne Division, including Command of the First Brigade Combat Team “Bastogne” of the 101st Airborne Division in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2003-2004). His other operational assignments include Chief of Operations for Multi-National Corps-Iraq in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2005-2006) and Director of Operations, Regional Command South in Kandahar, Afghanistan (2009-2010). General Hodges has also served in a variety of Joint and Army Staff positions to include Tactics Instructor; Chief of Plans, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea; Aide-de-Camp to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Chief of Staff, XVIII Airborne Corps; Director of the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell on the Joint Staff; Chief of Legislative Liaison for the United States Army; and Commander, NATO Allied Land Command (İzmir, Turkey). His last military assignment was as Commanding General, United States Army Europe (Wiesbaden, Germany) from 2014 to 2017. He retired from the U.S. Army in January 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MgfKJiY-I4&ab_channel=WestminsterInstitute
Nury Turkel is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and who serves as a Commissioner to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Mr. Turkel was born in a re-education camp at the height of China's Cultural Revolution and spent the several first several months of his life in detention with his mother. He came to the United States in 1995 as a student and was later granted asylum by the U.S. government. Mr. Turkel received an M.A. in International Relations and a J.D. from the American University here in Washington, D.C. In addition to his professional career, he has promoted Uyghur human rights and universal democratic norms. He is the Chairman of the Board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which he co-founded in 2003.
Previously he served as the President of the Uyghur American Association. Since 2011 Mr. Turkel has successfully represented a substantial number of political refugees with their asylum applications in the United States. He has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Foreign Policy and other prestigious venues. Nury has testified for Congress, including most recently in May on the atrocities against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. Many of his recommendations have been incorporated into U.S. laws and pending bills relating to Uyghurs in China, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020. In May, Fortune magazine named him one of the world's 50 greatest leaders.
Transcript: The National Security and Human Rights Dimensions of China’s Presence in the U.S. Capital Markets – Westminster Institute (westminster-institute.org)
For over 40 years, Mr. Robinson has been evaluating the intersection of global economics and finance and national security concerns. He was formerly Senior Director of International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council and Executive Secretary of the Cabinet-level Senior Inter-Governmental Group for International Economic Policy (SIG-IEP) under President Reagan.
Prior to his government service, Mr. Robinson was a Vice President in the International Department of the Chase Manhattan Bank with responsibilities for the bank’s loan portfolios in the former Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe and Yugoslavia. He also served as a personal assistant to former Chase Chairman David Rockefeller for two and a half years.
From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Robinson served as Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Congressionally U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He co-founded the Prague Security Studies Institute in early 2002 and incorporated PSSI Washington Inc. in October 2006.
Never Speak to Strangers: David Satter on Russia and the Soviet Union – Westminster Institute (westminster-institute.org)
David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Satter was born in Chicago in 1947 and graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.Litt degree in political philosophy. He worked for four years as a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune and, in 1976, he was named Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. He worked in Moscow for six years, from 1976 to 1982, during which time he sought out Soviet citizens with the intention of preserving their accounts of the Soviet totalitarian system for posterity.
After completing his term in Moscow, Satter became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal, contributing to the paper’s editorial page. In 1990, he was named a Thornton Hooper fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and then a senior fellow at the Institute. From 2003 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2008, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches a course on contemporary Russian history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs.
Satter has written three books about Russia: Russia: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale, 2011); Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Knopf, 1996; paperback, Yale 2001); and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale 2003). His books have been translated into Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Czech, Portuguese and Vietnamese. His first book, Age of Delirium, has been made into a documentary film in a U.S. – Latvian – Russian joint production.
Satter has testified frequently on Russian affairs before Congressional committees. He has written extensively for the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. His articles and op-ed pieces have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, National Review, National Review Online, Forbes.com, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The New York Sun, The New York Review of Books, Reader’s Digest and The Washington Times. He is frequently interviewed in both Russian and English by Radio Liberty, the Voice of America and the BBC Russian Service and has appeared on CNN, CNN International, BBC World, the Charlie Rose Show, Al Jazeera, France 24, Fox News, C-Span and ORT and RTR, the state run Russian television networks.
The founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock. Combined, they mandated the exercise of both freedom and reason.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/r9jqfJXriRs
Read the transcript: Is There a New Path to Peace in Afghanistan? – Westminster Institute (westminster-institute.org)
Ambassador Ali Jalali served as Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Germany and designated Special Envoy to NATO. He served as Interior Minister from 2003-2005, overseeing the creation of a trained force of 50,000 Afghan National Police and 12,000 Border Police to work effectively in counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and criminal investigation.
He recently served as a Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University in Washington D.C. His most recent book is A Military History of Afghanistan from the Great Game to the Global War on Terror (2017). A former officer in the Afghan Army, Col. Jalali served as a top military planner with the Afghan Resistance (Mujahedin) following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
He graduated from high command and staff colleges in Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.A published writer in three languages (English, Pashto, Dari/Farsi), Ali A. Jalali is the author of numerous books and articles on political, military and security issues in Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. He is the author of The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (2010).
Transcript: The Sources of Russian Conduct – Westminster Institute (westminster-institute.org)
Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. While there, he launched the “Window on Eurasia” series.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/challenges-facing-christian-communities-in-turkey-today/
Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian is a sociologist (with a particular reference to sociology of religion) and Associate Faculty Member of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. He has published extensively and lectures on minorities in contemporary Middle East; inter-ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus, the Armenian Church, Diaspora, and Turkish-Armenian relations. From 2002 to 2012 he taught and held various positions at University of Cambridge, and was co-founder of the Eurasia Research Centre at Judge Business School.
Dr. Tchilingirian is the author of numerous studies, articles and publications and has lectured internationally in leading universities, academic institutions and international NGOs (see www.hratch.info). His television, radio and newspaper interviews have appeared in international media outlets, including the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC News, Al-Jazeera and Radio Vaticana.
A transcript is unavailable for this talk. Dr. Tchilingirian’s remarks will be a chapter of Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East (eds. Mitri Raheb and Mark A. Lamport). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-armenian-azerbaijani-crisis/
Svante E. Cornell is Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. His main areas of expertise are security issues, state-building, and transnational crime in Southwest and Central Asia, with a specific focus on the Caucasus and Turkey. He is the Editor of the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, the Joint Center’s bi-weekly publication, and of the Joint Center’s Silk Road Papers series of occasional papers.
Dr. Cornell is the author of four books, including Small Nations and Great Powers, the first comprehensive study of the post-Soviet conflicts in the Caucasus. His articles have appeared in numerous leading academic and journals such as World Politics, the Washington Quarterly, Current History, Journal of Democracy, Europe-Asia Studies, etc. His commentaries and op-eds appear occasionally in the U.S., European, and regional press.
Cornell is Associate Professor (Docent) in Government at Uppsala University and Associate Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Cornell holds a Ph.D. in Peace and Conflict Studies from Uppsala University, a B.Sc. with High Honor in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and an honorary doctoral degree from the Behmenyar Institute of Law and Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. He is a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Military Science.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-nature-of-putins-regime-and-the-reasons-for-its-foreign-policy/
David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Satter was born in Chicago in 1947 and graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.Litt degree in political philosophy. He worked for four years as a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune and, in 1976, he was named Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. He worked in Moscow for six years, from 1976 to 1982, during which time he sought out Soviet citizens with the intention of preserving their accounts of the Soviet totalitarian system for posterity.
After completing his term in Moscow, Satter became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal, contributing to the paper’s editorial page. In 1990, he was named a Thornton Hooper fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and then a senior fellow at the Institute. From 2003 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2008, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches a course on contemporary Russian history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/how-china-sees-the-world/
Dean Cheng is The Heritage Foundation‘s research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs. He specializes in China’s military and foreign policy, in particular its relationship with the rest of Asia and with the United States. He is fluent in Chinese, and uses Chinese language materials regularly in his work. Prior to joining Heritage, he was a senior analyst with the China Studies Division at Center for Naval Analyses from 2001-2009, where he specialized on Chinese military issues, and authored studies on Chinese military doctrine, Chinese mobilization concepts, and Chinese space capabilities.
Before joining CNA, he was a senior analyst with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He has also served as an analyst with the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and Space Division, where he studied the Chinese defense industrial complex. He is the author of the book Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations, as well as a number of papers and book chapters examining various aspects of Chinese security affairs. He has been interviewed by or provided commentary for publications such as Time magazine, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, Jane’s Defense Weekly, and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. Mr. Cheng earned a bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University and has done doctoral studies at MIT.
Harun Maruf is a reporter and writer at VOA Africa Division with an extensive experience in working in conflict zones. He also covers security, extremism, piracy, human rights, politics and other current affairs issues. He secured the first radio interview with the late American jihadist Omar Hammami. Maruf has also reported on the emergence of pro-Islamic State militants in Somalia; the travels of Somali youth from Minnesota to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and has presented hundreds of original radio documentaries about Al-Shabab, extremism, corruption, piracy, and human rights. In addition, Maruf is the author of hundreds of articles, papers and scholarly works about Somalia and the Horn of Africa and he's frequently invited to speak on these subjects at international events, conferences, round-table discussions and town halls. Prior to VOA, Maruf worked for BBC and Associated Press as a reporter in Somalia, and as a researcher for Human Rights Watch. He holds a Master of Arts in international journalism from the City, University of London. One of the most powerful Islamic militant groups in Africa, Al-Shabaab exerts Taliban-like rule over millions in Somalia and poses a growing threat to stability in the Horn of Africa. Somalis risk retaliation or death if they oppose or fail to comply with Al-Shabaab-imposed restrictions on aspects of everyday life such as clothing, media, sports, interpersonal relations, and prayer. Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda's Most Powerful Ally recounts the rise, fall, and resurgence of this overlooked terrorist organization and provides an intimate understanding of its connections with Al-Qaeda.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-chinese-communist-partys-plan-to-dominate-asia-and-the-world/ Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.
In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.
Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.
He is also the author of the best-selling A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy. Other books include Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World, China Attacks, China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality, Journey to the Forbidden China, and Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese.
Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.
Steven Mosher lives in Virginia with his wife, Vera, and their nine children.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-crucifix-on-meccas-front-porch/
David Pinault received his B.A. in French literature from Georgetown University and his M.A.and Ph.D in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include comparative Christology and the status of Christian populations in Muslim-majority societies. Among the countries in which he has done fieldwork are Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. A recipient of Santa Clara University’s Public Intellectual Award and the Brutocao Award for Teaching Excellence, he has served since 2007 as director of SCU’s interdisciplinary program in Arabic, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (AIMES). He is also involved in wildlife rescue and animal trafficking issues in Southeast Asia and is a member of the advisory board of ProFauna Indonesia.
About the book His 2018 book The Crucifix on Mecca’s Front Porch: A Christian’s Companion for the Study of Islam has an unusual perspective. It argues that a critically minded examination of Islam can help Christians achieve a deeper appreciation of the unique truths of their own faith. It draws on the author’s personal experiences living in Islamic countries and his fieldwork with persecuted Christian-minority communities, especially in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Indonesia. It includes the author’s own original translations of Islamic texts in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, as well as primary-source materials in Latin that were written by Christian participants in the Crusades.
The author focuses on Muslim interactions with the Christian tradition. He examines and takes issue with the misguided approach of Christians like Hans Küng and Muslims like Mustafa Akyol, who in the interests of Christian-Muslim rapprochement, minimize theological differences between the two faiths, especially in the area of Christology. Such attempts at rapprochement, he writes, do a profound disservice to both religions.
Illustrating the Muslim view of Christ with Islamic polemical texts from the eleventh to the twenty-first centuries, the author draws on Hans Urs von Balthasar, and other theologians of kenotic Christology, to show how Islamic condemnations of divine “weakness” and “neediness” can deepen our appreciation of what is most uniquely Christian in our vision of Jesus, as God-made-man, who voluntarily experiences weakness, suffering, and death in solidarity with all human beings.
A book that’s both timely and urgently needed, The Crucifix on Mecca’s Front Porch invites readers to reflect on the stark differences between Christianity and Islam and come to a fresh appreciation of the Christian faith.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/who-lost-afghanistan/
Hy Rothstein recently retired from the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. Hy spent considerable time in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines observing the conduct of those wars. Dr. Rothstein has written and edited books about Afghanistan (Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare (2006) and Afghan Endgames – Strategy and Policy Choices for America’s Longest War (Feb 2012), Iraq (The Three Circles of War (2010)), an anthology that explores the similarities between insurgency and gang violence (Gangs & Guerrillas (2011), a comprehensive volume on deception titled, The Art and Science of Military Deception (2013) and, Assessing War, which addresses the challenges of measuring success and failure during war. Dr. Rothstein also served in the US Army as a Special Forces officer for more than twenty-six years. When not working, Hy single-hands his 40 foot sail boat on California’s central coast.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/you-will-be-assimilated-chinas-plan-to-sino-form-the-world/
David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. He is the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL). According to the Claremont Review of Books, the “Spengler” columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/iraq-past-present-and-pivotal-future/
Hassan Mneimneh is Principal at Middle East Alternatives in Washington DC. He is Scholar at the Middle East Institute and Contributing Editor at Fikra Forum at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
He was previously Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Director of the Center for Global Engagement at the Institute for American Values. Between 1999 and 2008, Mneimneh assumed leading functions at the Iraq Memory Foundation, the Iraq Foundation, and the Iraq Research and Documentation Project.
Mneimneh specializes in the affairs of the Middle East, North Africa, and the wider Islamic world with a particular emphasis on radicalism and factionalism. In previous capacities, he has focused on the significance of socio-political and cultural developments in the MENA region to US and European policies; assessed civil reaction to radicalizing tendencies in Muslim societies; and studied the evolution, record, and prospects of radical Islamist formations worldwide. He has written, in English, Arabic, and French, on political, cultural, historical, and intellectual questions concerning the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/china-and-us-strategic-competition/
Seth Cropsey is a senior fellow and director of the Center for American Seapower at Hudson Institute. He specializes in defense strategy, U.S. foreign and security policy in the Middle East and East Asia, and the future of U.S. naval power.
Cropsey began his career in government at the U.S. Department of Defense as assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and subsequently served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, where he was responsible for the Navy’s position on efforts to reorganize DoD, development of the maritime strategy, the Navy’s academic institutions, naval special operations, and burden-sharing with NATO allies. In the Bush administration, Cropsey moved to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to become acting assistant secretary, and then principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Cropsey served as a naval officer from 1985 to 2004.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/analysis-of-the-geopolitics-of-the-libya-conflict-june-2020/ Dr. Walid Phares served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and is Fox News national security expert.
Dr. Phares is an engaging and highly sought after Middle East expert and pacesetter, often predicting trends and situations on the ground years before they occur. He is a Fox News Expert, advisor to the US Congress and the European Parliament and served as a senior advisor on national security foreign policy to presidential candidate Mitt Romney 2012.
Dr Phares is the only expert/author who predicted the Arab Spring a year before it occurred in his pacesetting book, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (Threshold, a division of Simon and Shuster 2010). Dr Phares holds an extensive CV and noteworthy achievements in the fields of academia, government strategies, media and publishing critical advice on combating terrorism and countering jihadi radicalization both stateside and abroad.
Dr Phares holds a Ph.D in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami, and a Political Science Degree from St Joseph University and a Law degree from the Lebanese University in Beirut and a Master in International Law from Universite’ Jean Moulin in Lyons, France.
Dr Phares taught political science and Middle East studies at Florida Atlantic University between 1993 and 2004. Since 2006, he has taught Global Jihadi strategies at the National Defense University in Washington DC. Dr Phares lectures on campuses nationwide and internationally, including at the US Intelligence University. He lectured at Georgetown University, George Washington University, American University, Columbia, University of Chicago, Pepperdine, Boston College, Brandeis, UC Berkley, University of Colorado at Boulder, Loyola New Orleans, UC Santa Barbara, and many others including Ecole Militaire of France in Paris. Dr Phares lectures also to various academic associations including the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa in Washington DC and Middle East American ethnic organizations.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-reemergence-of-civilizations-including-russias-as-the-defining-factor-in-the-future-of-the-middle-east/ Dr. David Wurmser is a Senior Analyst at the Center for Security Policy. He has over 35 years of experience in foreign policy with the State Department, Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the American Enterprise Institute. He is a well-known expert on Middle East issues, especially the U.S.- Israel relationship.
From December 2018 until September 2019, Wurmser also served as senior advisor to U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton. Recently he was credited for authoring a series of memoranda for the White House to provide the rationale for striking hard at the Iranian regime, including the elimination of Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Wurmser served as Middle East Adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2007. He also served as a special assistant to Bolton when he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in the George W. Bush administration and as a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute from 2002-2003.
Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Wurmser consulted for the Office of the Secretary of Defense on a war‐related classified project on understanding the nature and strategic significance of terrorist group networks and their interactions with states. Wurmser served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He was mobilized during the Operational Vigilant Warrior following Iraq’s surge toward Kuwait in 1994 to serve on the Iraq Intelligence Task for the DIA. He was mobilized twice more for the same task force in 1996 and 1998 ‐‐ for which the Department of Defense awarded him the prestigious Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
Dr. Wurmser holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle East affairs from Johns Hopkins University. He is a prolific writer and has done many TV and radio interviews. He is the author of the 1999 book Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, which the New Yorker called the intellectual framework for President Bush’s freedom strategy the Middle East.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/inside-iran-what-forces-will-decide-its-future-and-how/
Mehdi Khalaji is the Libitzky Family fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on the politics of Iran and Shiite groups in the Middle East. A Shiite theologian by training, Mr. Khalaji has also served on the editorial boards of two prominent Iranian periodicals and produced for the BBC as well as the U.S. government’s Persian news service.
From 1986 to 2000, Mr. Khalaji trained in the seminaries of Qom, the traditional center of Iran’s clerical establishment. There he studied theology and jurisprudence, earning a doctorate and researching widely on modern intellectual and philosophical-political developments in Iran and the wider Islamic and Western worlds. In Qom, and later in Tehran, Mr. Khalaji launched a career in journalism, first serving on the editorial board of a theological journal, Naqd va Nazar, and then the daily Entekhab. In addition to his own writing, he has translated the works of the humanist Islamic scholar Muhammad Arkoun.
In 2000, Mr. Khalaji moved Paris where he studied Shiite theology and exegesis in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He also worked for BBC Persian as a political analyst on Iranian affairs, eventually becoming a broadcaster for the Prague-based Radio Farda, the Persian-language service of the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. At Radio Farda, he produced news, features, and analysis on a range of Middle Eastern, Iranian, and Islamic issues.
Mr. Khalaji writes a bilingual English and Persian blog, MehdiKhalaji.com. He previously addressed Westminster on the subject of How the Iranian Revolution Changed the Role of the Shia Clergy.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/is-the-muslim-brotherhood-still-a-threat-today/ Cynthia Farahat is a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a founder of the Egyptian Liberal party, which was the first secular classical liberal political party in the history of modern Egypt.
She co-authored Desecration of a Heavenly Religion, which analyzed and criticized Egypt’s blasphemy law. The book was officially banned in Egypt by al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2008. Cynthia’s work on countering Islamic terrorism has lead Lebanon’s intelligence officials to officially bar her from entering the country. She also received hundreds of death threats from Islamists and was placed on an al-Qaeda affiliated hit list. Recently she has briefed over 120 Congressional offices on the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood by discussing her personal story as well as her research, from a cache of thousands of previously undisclosed documents, into the nature of the Brotherhood.
In 2011, the abduction of her brother, the assassination of her friend, and numerous threats to her life prompted her to flee to the United States where she was granted political asylum. She is currently writing a book on the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in transnational terrorism.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/total-competition-the-china-challenge-in-the-south-china-sea/
Patrick M. Cronin is the Asia-Pacific Security Chair at Hudson Institute. Dr. Cronin’s research program analyzes the challenges and opportunities confronting the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, including China’s total competition campaign, the future of the Korean peninsula, and strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships. Dr. Cronin was previously senior advisor and senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and before that, senior director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University, where he simultaneously oversaw the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.
Dr. Cronin has a rich and diverse background in both Asian-Pacific security and U.S. defense, and foreign and development policy. Prior to leading INSS, Dr. Cronin served as the director of studies at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). At IISS, he also served as editor of the Adelphi Papers and as the executive director of the Armed Conflict Database. Before joining IISS, Dr. Cronin was senior vice president and director of research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
In 2001, Dr. Cronin was confirmed by the United States Senate to the third-ranking position at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While serving as Assistant Administrator for Policy and Program Coordination, Dr. Cronin also led the interagency task force that helped design the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
From 1998 until 2001, Dr. Cronin served as director of research at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Prior to that, he spent seven years at the National Defense University, first arriving at INSS in 1990 as a senior research professor covering Asian and long-range security issues. He was the founding executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly, and subsequently became both deputy director and director of research at the Institute. He received the Army’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award upon his departure from NDU in 1997.
He has also been a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. Naval Reserve intelligence officer, and an analyst with the Congressional Research Service and SRI International. He was associate editor of Strategic Review and worked as an undergraduate at the Miami Herald and the Fort Lauderdale News.
Dr. Cronin has taught at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and the University of Virginia’s Woodrow Wilson Department of Government.
He read international relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where he received both his M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees, and graduated with high honors from the University of Florida. He regularly publishes essays in leading publications and frequently conducts television and radio interviews.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/saudi-arabias-unpredictable-future/
Dr. Ali Alyami is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, based in Washington, D. C. He is a native of Saudi Arabia and has been an avid advocate for political reforms in Saudi Arabia.
The Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (CDHR) focuses on Saudi domestic and foreign policies and their impact on, and implications for, the Saudi people and the international community, especially U.S. economic and national security interests. Due to its centrality to Islam and possession of large quantities of fossil fuel energy sources, Saudi Arabia plays a major religious and economic role in the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide. CDHR was established in 2004 to promote institutionalized democratic and human rights reforms as the best way of achieving long term stability in Saudi Arabia.
Previously, Dr. Alyami was a Senior Fellow at the Saudi Institute in Washington, D.C., Director of an educational peace program for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco, and a Representative for the Arab Organization for Human Rights (a Cairo-based group) in North America. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, and a Master’s Degree from California State University in Los Angeles. His Ph.D. doctoral thesis was: “The Impact of Modernization on the Stability of the Saudi Monarchy.”
Dr. Alyami provided expert testimony regarding human rights in Saudi Arabia before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He also organized and participated in many conferences and discussions about Saudi Arabia, its policies and their impact on the Saudi people, the Middle East, and the international community. Alyami has spoken at conferences in the United States, London, Egypt, Sudan, and Israel, and is a frequent media presence.
https://westminster-institute.org/events/iraqi-freedom-confronts-iranian-domination/
Dr. Bilal Wahab is the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he focuses on governance in the Iraqi Kurdish region and in Iraq as a whole. He has taught at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, where he established the Center for Development and Natural Resources, a research program on oil and development.
Dr. Wahab earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University. He received his M.A. from American University, where he was among the first Iraqis awarded a Fulbright scholarship. His master’s thesis was on How Iraqi Oil Smuggling Greases Violence. He earned his B.A. from Salahaddin University in Erbil. He has also taught at Salahaddin University in the Political Science and English Language Departments. Along with numerous scholarly articles, he has written extensively in the Arabic and Kurdish media.
Dr. Wahab has contributed recent analyses on the subjects of: Kurdish Reactions to Their Abandonment in Syria; As Protests Explode, Iraq Must Get Serious About Reform; and Iraqi Kurdistan’s New Government. He speaks Arabic, Kurdish, Persian and Turkish.
Total run time: 1:11:35
YouTube video: https://bit.ly/37ZOI7l
YouTube post: https://bit.ly/37UROcI
Transcript: https://bit.ly/37YaIz9
Twitter: https://bit.ly/2DBUG05
Reddit: https://bit.ly/35LMS7U
Imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/al0VIZY
Pinterest: https://bit.ly/2Dyl3nz
Behance: https://bit.ly/33EXO5T
Facebook post: https://bit.ly/2rOhmY7
Facebook video: https://bit.ly/37XAALt
The United States’ approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing began the period of reform and opening in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later the hope of producing a benign People’s Republic of China has evaporated. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People’s Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat. In fact, these misguided policies produced the emergence of a 21st century challenge that may be as dangerous to the United States and its allies as the Soviet Union was. How can it meet this challenge?
About the speaker Bill Gertz is an award-winning national security journalist and author of seven books, including Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 and The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America. He last spoke at the Westminster Institute on his 2017 book, iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age. He is currently senior editor of The Washington Free Beacon, an online news outlet, and national security columnist for The Washington Times.
Gertz has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a “tool of the CIA” after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk at The Washington Times after he wrote a column critical of the CIA’s analysis of China. China’s communist government also has criticized him for his news reports exposing China’s weapons and missile sales to rogues states.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/indonesias-muslim-counter-radicalization-movements/
Paul Marshall is Wilson Distinguished Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta.
Mr. Marshall is the author and editor of more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, including Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (2013, with Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (2011, with Nina Shea), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2007), Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt’s Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996), and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).
He is the author of several hundred articles, and his writings have been translated into Russian, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Albanian, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese. He is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances, including interviews on ABC Evening News; CNN; PBS; Fox; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African, and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest, and many other newspapers and magazines.
Mr. Marshall is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion at Baylor University. He was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center’s Religious Freedom Project.
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-ongoing-war-in-the-persian-gulf-why-does-it-matter-to-the-us/
David Des Roches is Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies at National Defense University. Prior to this, he was the Defense Department director responsible for policy concerning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Prior to this assignment, he has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, as senior country director for Pakistan, as NATO operations director, and as deputy director for peacekeeping.
An Airborne Ranger in the Army Reserve, he was awarded the Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan. He has commanded conventional and special operations parachute units and has served on the US Special Operations Command staff as well as on the Joint Staff. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and obtained advanced degrees in Arab Politics from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, in War Studies from Kings College London, and Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. He has also attended the Federal Executive Institute, the German Staff College’s Higher Officer Seminar, the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.His academic awards include Phi Kappa Phi, the British Marshall Scholarship, designation as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, and selection as a Joseph Malone Fellow of the National Council of Arab American Relations.
His most recent publication is “Dominance versus Disruption: Asymmetry in Gulf Security,” which analyzes the security objectives of the Gulf Arab states and Iran. He previously spoke at Westminster on the Push and Pull of Religious Extremism: Who Are the Terrorists, How Are they Recruited, What Can We Do?
https://westminster-institute.org/events/liberty-in-the-things-of-god-the-christian-origins-of-religious-freedom/
Robert Louis Wilken is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past president of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Patristics Society, and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He is chairman of the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, the publisher of First Things. His new book is Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. (It will be available at his lecture for purchase and signing.) Dr. Wilken states: “Religious freedom rests on a simple truth: religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and for that reason cannot be coerced by external force.” Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, he shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how “the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day.”; For instance, Dr. Wilken quotes Tertullian (ca. 155-240): “the religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another. It is not part of religion to coerce religious practice, for it is by choice not coercion that we should be led to religion.” Carlos Eire, author of Reformations, says, “Wilken argues convincingly that the concept of religious freedom originated with Christian thinkers, challenging one of the most revered paradigms in Western intellectual history. In the process, he also injects a corrective twist into current debates about secularist hegemony.” Dr. Wilken received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught at Fordham University, the University of Notre Dame, the Institutum Patristicum (Augustinianum) in Rome, the Gregorian University in Rome, Providence College, and Lutheran Theological Seminary. He is the author of more than 10 books, including The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Yale, 2013), The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale, 2003), Remembering the Christian Past (Eerdmans, 1995), and The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (Yale, 1984).
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-art-of-peace-engaging-a-complex-world/
Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is a Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, and teaches at American University. For several decades, she has been one of the finest analysts and best proponents of public diplomacy in the war of ideas.
Her new book is The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World (Routledge). Her others books relevant to this topic are Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace and Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Ret.) says, “Juliana Geran Pilon explains disconnects between the instrumental use of violence and objectives in recent and ongoing conflicts. The neglect of the political and human nature of war has been a common cause of strategic failure as well as a common flaw in theories that oftentimes contribute to those failures. Indeed, recent wartime plans have exhibited a narcissistic approach, failing to account for interactions with determined enemies and other complicating political, cultural, historical and economic factors. Armed conflict is a competition and, as Dr. Pilon points out, winning the peace requires fighting across all contested spaces and considering the consolidation of military gains as an integral part of war. It is not enough to read The Art of Peace. We must also heed its lessons.”
Gen. James Mattis (Ret.) states that, “Juliana Pilon is to be commended for pressing the question of American competence in carrying out its global engagement. As she rightly points out in her book, we need to fully engage both our fundamental powers in American foreign policy: the power of inspiration and, when and where needed, the power of intimidation.”
Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-fertile-crescent-after-isis-between-russia-iran-and-israel/
Dr. Shmuel Bar served for thirty years in the Israeli government, first in the IDF Intelligence and then in the analytic and operational positions in the Israeli Office of the Prime Minister.
Since the mid 1980s, he has specialized in the ideology and operational codes of Islamic fundamentalist movements and particularly the Jihadi movement that later evolved into al-Qaeda.
He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of Warrant for Terror: The Fatwas of Radical Islam and the Duty to Jihad. He holds a Ph.D. in History of the Middle East from Tel-Aviv University.
From 2003 and June 2013, Dr. Bar served as Senior Research Fellow and then Director of Studies at the Institute of Policy and Strategy in Herzliya, Israel and on the steering team of the annual “Herzliya Conference”.
In addition to being an Adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, he is also a Senior Research Fellow at International Institute for Non-Proliferation Studies, has been (2007) Distinguished Koret Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has lectured at various academic institutions on issues relating to Israeli national security.
Dr. Bar has headed over 25 research projects – many of them for US government agencies – and published over 40 books, monographs and articles in professional journals on issues relating to the Middle East, including strategic issues in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, deterrence (both nuclear and vis-à-vis terrorist threats), radical Islamic ideology, Iran, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinians.He heads “Shmuel Bar- Research and Consultancy Ltd.” and is also Senior Research Fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at the Technion University in Haifa. Dr. Bar is also founder and CEO of IntuView Ltd – an Israeli based software company in the area of natural language processing.
Read the transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-effect-of-us-sanctions-on-irans-economy/
Dr. Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior Iran and financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, specializing in Iran’s economy and financial markets, sanctions and illicit finance. Born and raised in Iran, Saeed earned his Ph.D. in finance from the City University of New York where he analyzed the effect of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s financial markets as part of his dissertation. He teaches finance at Baruch College of New York. Saeed has a BS in engineering from the University of Tehran and an MS in engineering from Ecole Speciale des Travaux Publics in Paris. Saeed’s work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fox News, Foreign Policy, Business Insider, The Weekly Standard, The National Interest, National Post (Canada), Hurriyet (Turkey), Arab News, and The Jerusalem Post. He has also been quoted and interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Foreign Policy, Bild, and BBC Persian.
Chen Guangcheng is a blind Chinese civil rights activist, known internationally as “the barefoot lawyer.” Blind since infancy, illiterate until his late teens, he taught himself law and became a fierce advocate for his country’s voiceless poor. For his trouble, he spent more than four years in prison on charges of “disturbing public order” and was then held under strict house arrest in his heavily guarded home in Shandong province from 2010 to 2012. In a daring escape that captured worldwide headlines, he fled to the U.S. embassy in Beijing. After high-level negotiations between the U.S. and China, Mr. Chen was allowed to leave for America. Since 2013, he has been a senior research fellow at Catholic University of America, the Witherspoon Institute, and the Lantos Foundation.
Chen has written a riveting memoir and a revealing portrait of modern China, titled The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China. The Atlantic Monthly said, “This exceptional book will join the ranks of classic accounts of individual bravery, principle, and vision in the face of cruelty and repression. Chen Guangcheng is known around the world for the daring of his escape from captivity; as The Barefoot Lawyer makes clear, his journey and the accomplishments before that were at least as remarkable. Anyone who wants to understand the struggle for China’s future, being waged inside that country and by friends of China around the world, will want to read this book.”
Transcript: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/gorka/
Dr. Sebastian Gorka is former Deputy Assistant and Strategist to the President (2017) and author of the best-selling book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War. His new book is Why We Fight: Recovering America’s Will to Win.
Former Kokkalis Fellow at Harvard, he has taught at Georgetown, was Associate Dean at National Defense University and held the distinguished chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University.
Sebastian was born in the UK to parents who escaped Communism during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He is an internationally recognized authority on issues of national security, irregular warfare, terrorism and democratization, having worked in government and the private and NGO sectors in Europe and the United States.
After September the 11th 2001, he spent four years on the faculty of the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany and has been involved in the training and education of 1,600+ counterterrorism, special forces and intelligence officers and still teaches at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (Fort Bragg), home of the Green Berets. He has briefed the CIA, DIA, ODNI, the US Navy SEALs, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the President.
Joseph M. Humire is the Executive Director of the Center for a Secure Free Society. As a global security expert specializing in asymmetric warfare, Mr. Humire has produced leading research and investigations on Islamic extremism and Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, as well as other topics. His work is frequently sought after by various entities within the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community, as well as prominent think tanks and universities throughout the Americas. Moreover, Mr. Humire is an eight-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps having served combat tours in Iraq and Liberia, as well as taking part in the multinational training exercise in Latin America and the Caribbean: UNITAS 45-04.
Iran is the most ardent state sponsor of terror in the world. The Western Hemisphere has been victim of Iranian terror in the past, and these attacks paved the way for the growing presence of radical Islamists and Iranian revolutionary guards in Latin America. In the past five years, there have been at least two clear-cut cases in which the Islamic Republic has used Latin America to stage attempted terrorist attacks within the United States. Joseph Humire will look at the presence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah in Latin America, including not only military to military cooperation but also their extensive information operations as well as criminal activities and how these might impact U.S. homeland security.
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/armies-of-sand-the-past-present-and-future-of-arab-military-effectiveness/
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/shmuel-bar-demise-of-the-arab-state-re-tribalization-and-the-emergence-of-jihadistans-in-the-next-five-years/
Dr. Mary Habeck lectures on al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as on military strategy and history, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Georgetown University, and American University.
Her recent monograph for the Heritage Foundation is titled The U.S. Must Identify Jihadi-Salafists through Their Ideology, Practices, and Methodology-and Isolate Them. She is the author of Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (Yale, 2005) and three forthcoming sequels, Attacking America: Al-Qa’ida’s Grand Strategy; Managing Savagery: Al-Qa’ida’s Military and Political Strategies; and Fighting the Enemy: The U.S. and its War against al-Qa’ida.
She is also a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. From 2005-2013 she was an Associate Professor in Strategic Studies at SAIS, teaching courses on extremism, military history, and strategic thought. Before moving to SAIS, Dr. Habecktaught American and European military history in Yale’s history department, 1994-2005. She received her PhD in history from Yale in 1996, an MA in international relations from Yale in 1989, and a BA in international studies, Russian, and Spanish from Ohio State in 1987.
Dr. Habeck was appointed by President Bush to the Council on the Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities (2006-2013), and in 2008-2009 she was the Special Advisor for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council staff. Her other books include Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-1939 (2003), Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, co-editor (2001) and The Great War and the Twentieth Century, co-editor (2000).
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/tadros-sorrows-of-egypt-revisited/
Some of the principles of warfare are ancient, others are new, but all described in The New Rules of War will permanently shape war now and in the future. By following them Sean McFate argues, we can prevail. But if we do not, terrorists, rogue states, and others who do not fight conventionally will succeed—and rule the world.
Robert R. Reilly is Director of the Westminster Institute. He has been on the board since its founding. In his 25 years of government service, he has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America, where he had worked the prior decade. Mr. Reilly served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985), and in the U.S. Information Agency both in D.C. and abroad. In the private sector, he spent more than seven years with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, as both national director and then president. He was on active duty as an armored cavalry officer for two years, and attended Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University. He has published widely on foreign policy, the “war of ideas”, and classical music.
Among his many publications are:
The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, ISI Books, 2010.
Assessing War, “Assessing the War of Ideas during War,” Georgetown University Press, 2015.
Information Operations: Successes and Failures, Westminster Institute, 2014.
The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, Isaac Publishing, 2014.
The Westminster Institute was established in 2009 to promote individual dignity and freedom for people throughout the world by sponsoring high-quality research, with a particular focus on the threats from extremism and radical ideologies. The Westminster Institute is an independent non-profit organization that is funded by contributions from individuals and private foundations. It receives no government funding. The Institute holds briefings and events throughout the year. The events are free and open to the public.
Dr. Tawfik Hamid is a thinker and reformer who was at one time an Islamic extremist. While still in medical school, he was recruited as a member of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, the most violent Jihadi group in Egypt. There he became acquainted with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahri, who later served as second in command to Osama bin Laden. Zawahri is now the leader of Al-Qaeda. After being radicalized Dr. Hamid experienced an awakening of conscience, recognized the threat of Radical Islam, and started to teach modern peaceful interpretations of classical Islamic core texts.
In a seminal article, “The Development of a Jihadist’s Mind,” he described the process of his recruitment and explained how the appeal of jihadi ideas works. In 2015, Dr. Hamid published a book on how to defeat these ideas: Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us; How to Defeat It. Ayaan Hirsi Ali remarked that, “Reformers such as Tawfik Hamid … must be supported and protected. They should be as well known as Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and Havel were in the 1980s.” (Dr. Hamid’s book will be available for purchase at his talk.)
Dr. Hamid’s Facebook page (in Arabic), Modern Interpretation for the Quran, provides a peace-promoting commentary on and understanding of the Quran. The page has garnered over 2,000,000 “Likes” from an Arabic speaking audience since it began in May, 2013. In addition, Dr. Hamid recently launched a YouTube channel (in Arabic) to Counter Radicalism. His channel has more than a quarter million views and more than 1200 other channels subscribe to it. Furthermore, Akbar Al-Youm, one of the Arab world’s most reputable and widespread newspapers, recently published a major article by Dr. Hamid, in Arabic, wherein he suggests ten major, novel principles for re-understanding the Quran in a peaceful way to counter radicalism.
Dr. Hamid has appeared on shows spanning the spectrum from CNN to Fox News and C-SPAN. He has also appeared on Aljazeera TV Channel (Arabic) more than 60 times in the last couple of years, and his articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, VOA, France 24, RT (Russia Today), and the Jerusalem Post. Dr. Hamid’s comments have also appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, USA Today, The Huffington Post, the National Journal, and Wired magazine.
He has spoken and testified before/with: the U.S. Congress (House Armed Service Committee); the Future Summit at the invitation of President Shimon Peres; numerous Department of Defense (DoD) offices at the Pentagon; the Special Operations Command; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI); the National Security Agency (NSA); the European Parliament; the New York Academy of Science, and many others.
James Clad is Senior Fellow for Asia at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington DC. He is also a senior adviser for Asia at the CNA Corporation in Arlington, Virginia. During 2002-10, he served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia (including Australasia and the Pacific islands) and as Senior Counselor at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. From 1995-2002, he was professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and Director/Asia-Pacific Energy at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Trained as a New Zealand lawyer, James Clad’s career has focused on Asian diplomatic, energy and security issues – broadening after 2002 to include the Middle East. During the 1980s-90s, he held Far Eastern Economic Review staff positions in various Asian capitals, and held fellowships at Harvard University and St. Antony’s College/Oxford. In 1991, he joined the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC as senior associate for Asia.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Clad belonged to the New Zealand diplomatic service, serving in Delhi and more extensively in Jakarta. His books include Business, Money & Power in Southeast Asia (1991); After the Crusade — America in the Post-Superpower Era (1996), and Borderlands of Asia (2012), a volume of political geography. His recent articles deal with power politics in the western Pacific, with China/U.S. relations, and the U.S. shale revolution.
In 2009, he received the US Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and in 2012 became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), a royal honour.
Harun Maruf is a reporter and writer at VOA Africa Division with an extensive experience in working in conflict zones. He also covers security, extremism, piracy, human rights, politics and other current affairs issues. He secured the first radio interview with the late American jihadist Omar Hammami.
Maruf has also reported on the emergence of pro-Islamic State militants in Somalia; the travels of Somali youth from Minnesota to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and has presented hundreds of original radio documentaries about Al-Shabab, extremism, corruption, piracy, and human rights. In addition, Maruf is the author of hundreds of articles, papers and scholarly works about Somalia and the Horn of Africa and he’s frequently invited to speak on these subjects at international events, conferences, round-table discussions and town halls. Prior to VOA, Maruf worked for BBC and Associated Press as a reporter in Somalia, and as a researcher for Human Rights Watch. He holds a Master of Arts in international journalism from the City, University of London.
One of the most powerful Islamic militant groups in Africa, Al-Shabaab exerts Taliban-like rule over millions in Somalia and poses a growing threat to stability in the Horn of Africa. Somalis risk retaliation or death if they oppose or fail to comply with Al-Shabaab-imposed restrictions on aspects of everyday life such as clothing, media, sports, interpersonal relations, and prayer. Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda’s Most Powerful Ally recounts the rise, fall, and resurgence of this overlooked terrorist organization and provides an intimate understanding of its connections with Al-Qaeda.
Drawing from interviews with former Al-Shabaab militants, including high-ranking officials, military commanders, police, and foot soldiers, authors Harun Maruf and Dan Joseph reveal the motivations of those who commit their lives to the group and its violent jihadist agenda. A wealth of sources including U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, letters taken from the Pakistani hideout of Osama bin Laden, case files from the prosecution of American Al-Shabaab members, emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, and Al-Shabaab’s own statements and recruiting videos inform Maruf and Joseph’s investigation of the United States’ campaign against Al-Shabaab and how the 2006 U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia gave the group the popular support it needed to radicalize ordinary citizens and become a powerful movement.
Dr. Aykan Erdemir is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011-2015) who served in the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, EU Harmonization Committee, and the Ad Hoc Parliamentary Committee on the IT Sector and the Internet. Dr. Erdemir is an outspoken defender of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedoms in the Middle East. Dr. Erdemir has been at the forefront of the struggle against religious persecution, hate crimes, and hate speech in Turkey. He is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and a drafter of and signatory to the Oslo Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief (2014) as well as a signatory legislator to the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism. On April 27, 2016, Dr. Erdemir was awarded the Stefanus Prize for Religious Freedom in recognition of his advocacy for minority rights and religious freedoms.
After completing his BA in International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, Dr. Erdemir received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, where his doctoral dissertation was entitled, “Incorporating Alevis: The Transformation of Governance and Faith-based Collective Action in Turkey.” He also worked as a doctoral fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a research associate at the University of Oxford’s Center on Migration, Policy and Society. In March 2015, Dr. Erdemir was awarded a distinguished fellowship at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Law and Public Policy.
Dr. Erdemir has edited seven books, including Rethinking Global Migration: Practices, Policies, and Discourses in the European Neighbourhood (KORA) and Social Dynamics of Global Terrorism: Risk and Prevention Policies(IOS Press). He is co-author of the 2016 book Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge). His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Politico Europe, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, The Cipher Brief, Business Insider, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Hürriyet Daily News, Ahram Online, and The Times of Israel, and quoted in media including The Economist, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, Time, and Foreign Policy.
Dr. Jeff Moore is CEO of Muir Analytics, a private threat intelligence company. Dr. Moore was a professor of Counter Terror and Counterinsurgency at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs. He is the author of “The Thai Way of Counterinsurgency” and “Spies for Nimitz: Joint Military Intelligence in the Pacific War.”
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of eighteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing) and The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery Publishing).
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/daniel-brubaker/
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/mansour-al-hadj/
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/alberto-fernandez/
Dr. Jack Dziak is co-founder and President of Dziak Group, a consulting firm in the fields of intelligence, counterintelligence, and technology transfer. He is a Distinguished Fellow in Intelligence Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council and also is a Senior Fellow at the International Assessment Strategy Center.
Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/patrick-clawson/
Christopher C. Harmon wrote his political science dissertation on terrorism in the early 1980s and continued that work as Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy to a member of Congress and, much later, director of counterterrorism studies programs in Asia and Europe for the U. S. government.
A professor at civilian and military graduate schools including the Naval War College, Dr. Harmon began teaching courses at The Institute of World Politics after 9/11 -- on terrorism, and later on counterterrorism.
Lead author or editor of six books, he holds the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University, Quantico VA.
Hassan Abbas is Professor of International Security Studies and Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs (CISA). Aside from his expertise on Pakistan and Afghanistan, he also travels frequently to Iraq for research work on Hashd al-Shaabi (also known as Popular Mobilization Forces/Shia Militias). Along with addressing the main topic of the Taliban revival, he will compare and contrast Taliban and Hashd.
His latest book titled, The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier (Yale University Press, 2014) was profiled on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in August 2014. Abbas’ earlier well acclaimed book Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America’s War on Terror (M E Sharpe, 2004) remains on bestseller lists in Pakistan and India. He also runs WATANDOST, a blog on Pakistan and its neighbors’ related affairs. His other publications include an Asia Society report titled Stabilizing Pakistan Through Police Reform (2012) and Pakistan 2020: A Vision for Building a Better Future (Asia Society, 2011).
Dr. Abbas serves as a Carnegie Fellow 2016-2017 at New America where he is focusing on a book project on Islam’s internal struggles and spirituality narrated through the lens of his travels to Islam’s holy sites across the world. He is also currently a Senior Advisor at Asia Society. He was the Distinguished Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University before joining CISA and has previously held fellowships at Harvard Law School and Asia Society in New York.
He regularly appears as an analyst on media including CNN, ABC, BBC, C-Span, Al Jazeera and GEO TV (Pakistan). His opinion pieces and research articles have been published in various leading international newspapers and academic publications.
Author Ibn Warraq‘s most recent book is The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology. In it, he takes the dogmas of jihadists seriously and critically examines the Islamic sources upon which they draw. Ibn Warraq is perhaps most famous for his best-selling work, Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), an early warning to the West about the dangers of political Islam and multiculturalism. He has edited and contributed to several books of Koranic criticism and on the origins of Islam: The Origins of the Koran, 1998; The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, 2000; What the Koran Really Says, 2002; Which Koran? 2011; and Christmas in the Koran, 2014.
Bernard Lewis has written that, “Ibn Warraq exemplifies the rarely combined qualities of courage, integrity, and intelligence.” Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, 2007, was described by distinguished professor Paul Berman as “a glorious work of scholarship, and it is going to contribute mightily to modernizing the way we think about Western civilization and the rest of the world.” In Why the West is Best, 2011, Ibn Warraq addressed the need for Western civilization to regain its civilizational self-confidence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said that “Warraq’s books have defended Western civilization and have reminded us what we are fighting for.”
He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Westminster Institute, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a contributing editor to The New English Review. He studied Arabic and Persian at the University of Edinburgh.
Michael Pregent is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer with more than 28 years of experience working security, terrorism, counter-insurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. He served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, served as a liaison officer in Egypt during the 2000 Intifada, as a counter-insurgency intelligence officer at CENTCOM in 2001, and as a company commander in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pregent spent considerable time working malign Iranian influence in Iraq as an advisor to Iraq’s Security and Intelligence apparatus, including an embedded advisory role with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Office of the Commander-in-Chief. He also served as an embedded advisor with the Peshmerga in Mosul 2005-06. As a civilian working for DIA, he served as a political and military advisor to USF-I focusing on reconciliation, the insurgency, and Iranian influence in Iraq from 2007-2011. He was a violent extremism and foreign fighter analyst at CENTCOM from 2011-2013.
Mr. Pregent holds a Masters in Strategic Public Relations from The George Washington University and is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect. He is an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute. He is a senior Middle East analyst, a former adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
He frequently appears as an expert analyst on Shia militias, Iran, Iraq, and ISIS with appearances on BBC World News, Al-Jazeera International, CNN, CNN International, and Fox News.
David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. He is the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL). According to the Claremont Review of Books, the “Spengler” columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions.
His analyses of global events have become highly regarded. Former C.I.A. National Intelligence Council Vice Chairman Herbert E. Meyer said, “Ask anyone in the intelligence business to name the world’s most brilliant intelligence service, and we’ll all give the same answer: Spengler. David P. Goldman’s ‘Spengler’ columns provide more insight than the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad combined.” Goldman concealed his identity under the “Spengler” pseudonym until 2009, when he revealed his identity in the Asia Times article, “And Spengler is…” and the First Things article “Confessions of a Coward”. Goldman regularly appears as a guest on CNBC’s Larry Kudlow Program, where he has been an outspoken critic of Federal Reserve efforts to resuscitate the American economy. He is the author of How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam is Dying Too) and It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations.
At the Institute of Religion and Democracy since 1993, Faith McDonnell is the Director of Religious Liberty Programs and of the Church Alliance for a New Sudan.
She writes and speaks on the subject of the persecuted church and has organized rallies and vigils for Sudan in front of the White House, the State Department, the Canadian Embassy, and the Sudanese Embassy. She has drafted legislation on religious persecution for the Episcopal Church and for the United States Congress. In June 2007, her book, Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children, was published by Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
She is a Contributing Editor to Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy and writes for such publications as Breitbart, The Stream, FrontPageMag, PJMedia, and with Chelsen Vicari has a blog site, Faith&Chelsen: Tackling Tough Topics in Church & Culture, on the Patheos Evangelical Channel.
Faith is a member of Church of the Apostles, Anglican, and serves on the church’s international missions committee. She serves as a board member for several human rights organizations.
Dr. Joshua Muravchik is a Distinguished Fellow at the World Affairs Institute and teaches at the Institute of World Politics. Formerly, he was a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Instituteand a Fellow in Residence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was also an aide to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) in 1977 and a campaign aide to the late Senator Henry M. Jackson in his pursuit of the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.
Dr. Muravchik is the author of eleven books, including Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, and The Imperative of American Leadership; and also more than 400 articles in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals.
Dr. Muravchik received an undergraduate degree from City College of New York and a Ph.D in international relations from Georgetown University. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Aurel Vlaicu University of Romania (2004). In 1998 he received a citation from the Polish parliament for his activities on behalf of Solidarity.
Indonesia contains the world’s largest Muslim population. Yet insufficient attention has been paid to how it sees the threat of radical Islam, a subject that Wibawanto Nugroho has studied deeply.
He has served in the Indonesian government in several capacities. Presently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, with a dissertation on the subject of Understanding Islamist Radical Terrorism. He is supervised by Dr. Omar Ashour and Dr. Jonathan Githens-Mazer of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. His research included directly interviewing some 40 terrorists, as well as relevant policy makers.
He has worked as the Expert Staff, Strategist and Senior Policy Analyst with the Indonesian Army; Ministry of Defense; the Chairman of the Defense, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Information Committee of Indonesian Parliament; and the Indonesian Coordinating Ministry of Political, Legal and Security Affairs. From 2013 – 2014 he also worked as a Senior Adviser for Sanitas International, a global political consulting firm. While working on his PhD (2014 – 2017) with the University of Exeter, he was also designated as an alumni fellow/SME with NDU.
He holds degrees from the University of Bradford, the U.S. National Defense University (NDU), and the George Mason University School of Public and Government. He has just been invited to give a speech at Capstone Course of the Indonesian National Resilience Agency (Lemhanas RI), on the topic of national ideology, strategy, and development, this November. His thesis at National Defense University, titled “Indonesian Armed Forces’ Roles, Strategies and Capabilities in Countering Terrorism within a Changing National Security: Looking Ahead 2007 – 2017” earned an Honors award from the university. He was also a principal speaker representing the Republic of Indonesia at the 2008 U.S. Army TRADOC-hosted global symposium on the Future Joint Operating Environment toward 2025. In 2011 he also appeared as a principal speaker along with the head of Indonesian BNPT (National Counter Terrorism Agency) in the BNPT-hosted international symposium on deradicalization in Makassar, Indonesia. Wibawanto Nugroho is a Fulbright scholar and the recipient of Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars.
Major General Abbas Ibrahim is head of Lebanon’s Directorate of General Security (DGS), which Asharq al-Awsat calls “The Eyes and Ears of the Lebanese State.” He is a highly decorated officer with first-hand knowledge of the most sensitive security challenges in the Middle East.
Before his appointment as Director General of General Security in 2011, General Ibrahim held many significant positions. In 1994, he was appointed head of the counter-terrorism and espionage department at the intelligence directorate – G2. He served as Head of Counter Terrorism branch – G2 from 1998 – 2002. Before that, in 1989, he was the personal bodyguard of Arab League envoy to Lebanon Lakhdar Brahimi. He was then appointed bodyguard to late President Elias al-Hrawi and remained in that post until 1992 when he was tasked with protecting then newly appointed Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
He first enrolled in military school when he was 19 and graduated three years later with the rank of lieutenant. Throughout the 1980s, he took part in several training courses in the military, culminating in an infantry course in the United States in 1989. He also received advanced security training in the United Kingdom in 1998.
Between 2005 and 2008, Ibrahim was head of the intelligence bureau in the South, putting him on the frontlines of the unrest in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh.
In 2014, Sarwah won a seat in the Iraqi Parliament as a member of the Goran (Change) party. Defending women’s rights and democracy in Kurdistan and the Iraqi Parliament, Sarwah recently became the head of the Goran party bloc in parliament. She will talk about the Kurdish independence referendum, women’s rights, and suffering under ISIS.
David Eubank, former U.S. Army Ranger and Special Forces officer and founder of the Free Burma Rangers, will discuss his time spent on the front lines of the battle against ISIS in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, and will urge the Trump administration to continue help in that region along the following lines.
David Des Roches is Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies at National Defense University. Prior to this, he was the Defense Department director responsible for policy concerning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Prior to this assignment, he has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, as senior country director for Pakistan, as NATO operations director, and as deputy director for peacekeeping.
Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council. An expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia, he has consulted for both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department, and provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of government agencies.
Novelist Mark Helprin has written about defense and foreign relations for fifty years and advised officials at the highest levels from the White House on down. He served in the Israeli army and the Israeli Air Force. He was personally commended by the Director of Central Intelligence for making the best military estimates “in or out of government.”
Clifford D. May is the founder and President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan policy institute focusing on national security created immediately following the 9/11/01 attacks on the United States. Under his leadership, FDD has become one of the nation’s most highly regarded think tanks.
America is at war, but most Americans don’t know it. Covert information warfare is waged by world powers and rogue states—like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—and groups like ISIS. Bill Gertz describes how technology has revolutionized modern warfare, how the last administration failed to meet this challenge, and what we can do to fight back.
Mehdi Khalaji is the Libitzky Family fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on the politics of Iran and Shiite groups in the Middle East. A Shiite theologian by training, Mr. Khalaji has also served on the editorial boards of two prominent Iranian periodicals and produced for the BBC as well as the U.S. government’s Persian news service.
Ali Jalali was the Interior Minister of Afghanistan.
Read the talk's transcript here: https://bit.ly/2UBmf0e
Transcript: https://bit.ly/2GretQT
Dr. Walid Phares, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and is Fox News national security expert, will assess US policy towards the Greater Middle East from Afghanistan to Libya, with insights into major crises in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gulf and Turkey.
Dr. Phares is an engaging and highly sought after Middle East expert and pacesetter, often predicting trends and situations on the ground years before they occur. He is a Fox News Expert, advisor to the US Congress and the European Parliament and served as a senior advisor on national security foreign policy to presidential candidate Mitt Romney 2012.
Dr Phares is the only expert/author who predicted the Arab Spring a year before it occurred in his pacesetting book, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (Threshold, a division of Simon and Shuster 2010). Dr Phares holds an extensive CV and noteworthy achievements in the fields of academia, government strategies, media and publishing critical advice on combatting terrorism and countering jihadi radicalization both stateside and abroad.
James Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.
Dr. Sebastian L. Gorka, Director, National Security Fellowship Program at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Contributing co-editor, Toward A Grand Strategy Against Terrorism.
Robert “Bud” McFarlane was National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985.
Michael Eisenstadt is the Kahn Fellow and director of The Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program. A specialist in Persian Gulf and Arab-Israeli security affairs, he has published widely on irregular and conventional warfare, and nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East.
Prior to joining the Institute in 1989, Mr. Eisenstadt worked as a military analyst with the U.S. government.
Mr. Eisenstadt served for twenty-six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve before retiring in 2010. His military service included active-duty stints in Iraq with the United States Forces-Iraq headquarters (2010) and the Human Terrain System Assessment Team (2008); in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan with the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2008-2009); at U.S. Central Command headquarters and on the Joint Staff during Operation Enduring Freedom and the planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom (2001-2002); and in Turkey and Iraq during Operation Provide Comfort (1991).
He has also served in a civilian capacity on the Multinational Force-Iraq/U.S. Embassy Baghdad Joint Campaign Plan Assessment Team (2009) and as a consultant or advisor to the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group (2006), the Multinational Corps-Iraq Information Operations Task Force (2005-2006), and the State Department’s Future of Iraq defense policy working group (2002-2003). In 1992, he took a leave of absence from the Institute to work on the U.S. Air Force Gulf War Air Power Survey.
Yigal Carmon is President and founder of MEMRI, which bridges the language gap between the West and the Middle East and South Asia, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu-Pashtu, Dari, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, and intellectual trends.
This major retelling of the Suez Crisis of 1956—one of the most important events in the history of U.S. policy in the Middle East—shows how President Eisenhower came to realize that Israel, not Egypt, is America’s strongest regional ally.
Read the transcript: https://bit.ly/2TLWcX3
Robert R. Reilly is director of the Westminster Institute. He has been on the board since its founding. In his 25 years of government service, he has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America, where he had worked the prior decade. Mr. Reilly served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985), and in the U.S. Information Agency both in D.C. and abroad. In the private sector, he spent more than seven years with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, as both national director and then president. He was on active duty as an armored cavalry officer for two years, and attended Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University. He has published widely on foreign policy, the “war of ideas”, and classical music.
The death of Osama bin Laden significantly affected both sides in the War on Terror. The most important questions now are how will al Qaeda and its associated movements respond to the death of their leader, and is the United States safer or in more danger today? The Westminster Institute is bringing together world-renowned authorities and national security practitioners for a one-day special event in Washington, D.C. Together they will provide answers to these questions and also address the broader questions of what impact bin Laden’s death will have on non-violent jihadists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and what strategies can the U.S. employ to turn this battlefield win into a definitive victory.
Dr. S. Frederick Starr is the author of Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, which chronicles a forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. The book has been translated into 13 languages. He is the founding Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Instituteand Silk Road Studies Program, a joint transatlantic research center affiliated with the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington (where he is a Research Professor).
His research on the countries of Greater Central Asia, their history, development, internal dynamics, as well as on US policy towards the region has resulted in twenty-two books and 200 published articles. His most recent book is The Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia. Dr. Starr is a frequent commentator on the affairs of the region, and the author of numerous articles in journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National Review, Far East Economic Review, and op-eds in various leading American and international newspapers. During the past decade he has returned repeatedly to the challenge of reopening continental-wide transport passing through Central Asia and Afghanistan, which he sees as a key to success in Afghanistan itself. Dr. Starr was the founding Chairman of the Kennan Institute in Washington, and served as Vice President of Tulane University and President of the Aspen Institute and of Oberlin College (1983-94). He was closely involved in planning the University of Central Asia and the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy and is a trustee of the Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He earned his PhD in History at Princeton, MA at King’s College, Cambridge, and his BA at Yale, and holds four honorary degrees.
Eyewitness Dominican Sister Diana Momeka, during a hearing before Congress in 2015, testified: “Uprooted and forcefully displaced, we have realized that ISIS’s plan is to evacuate the land of Christians and wipe the earth clean of any evidence that we ever existed.” Sr. Diana’s own convent was destroyed by ISIS. She and Syriac Catholic Father Behnam Benoka founded and run the Humanitarian Nineveh Relief Organization in Iraqi Kurdistan where they provide crucial health services and humanitarian aid to thousands of displaced families in and around Erbil. Today, many of the ancient villages have been liberated from ISIS, but the majority of homes, churches, building and infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed. As ISIS retreats, their goal is to restore hope for those who have survived. Sister Diana shared personal stories of ISIS’ campaign of genocidal acts throughout her homeland. She speak about the future of Christianity and other religious minorities in Iraq, the current humanitarian crisis and the urgent need to support the population.
Sr. Diana was displaced from her hometown Qaraqosh, where she taught English since 2013, by ISIS on August 6, 2014. She has also taught at St. Ephrem Seminary in Qaraqosh and the Baghdad Academy for Human Science. She received a Doctorate of Ministry degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Celina Realuyo is Professor of Practice at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University where she focuses on U.S. national security, illicit networks, transnational organized crime, counterterrorism and threat finance issues.
From 2002-2006, Professor Realuyo served as the State Department Director of Counterterrorism Finance Programs in the U.S. Secretary of State’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in Washington, D.C. She managed a multi-million dollar foreign assistance program aimed at safeguarding financial systems against terrorist financing. Under her stewardship, the U.S. delivered training and technical assistance to over 20 countries across four continents (including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.) Professor Realuyo holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, MA from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), BS from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and Certificate from l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, France. Professor Realuyo has taught at Georgetown, George Washington, and Joint Special Operations Universities. She has traveled to over 70 countries and speaks English, French, and Spanish fluently, and is conversant in Italian, German, Filipino, and Arabic. She speaks regularly on “Managing U.S. National Security in 21st Century,” “The 3 R’s: Responding to Risk with Resourcefulness,” “Following the Money Trail to Combat Terrorism, Crime, and Corruption,” and “Combating the Convergence of Illicit Networks in an Age of Globalization.”
Dr. John Lenczowski, is President of the Institute of World Politics and former Director of European and Soviet Affairs, National Security Council.
Stephen Ulph is a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and Founder and Former Editor of Jane’s Terrorism Security Monitor.
Samuel Tadros is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, where he researches the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East and its implications for religious freedom and regional politics.
Prior to joining Hudson in 2011, Tadros was a Senior Partner at the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth, an organization that aims to spread the ideas of classical liberalism in Egypt. He has received his MA in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University and his BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Tadros previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked on the Muslim Brotherhood and worked as a consultant for the Hudson Institute on Moderate Islamic Thinkers, and most recently the Heritage Foundation on Religious Freedom in Egypt. In 2007, he was chosen by the State Department in its first Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in collaboration with Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.
His articles have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, National Review, World Affairs, and the Weekly Standard. Tadros is a Professorial Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
In 2013, Tadros published Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Hoover), a book on the Copts and the modern politics of Egypt.
Robert R. Reilly is the Executive Director of the Westminster Institute. In his 25 years of government service, he has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America, where he had worked the prior decade. Mr. Reilly served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985), and in the U.S. Information Agency both in D.C. and abroad. In the private sector, he spent more than seven years with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, as both national director and then president. He was on active duty as an armored cavalry officer for two years, and attended Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University. He has published widely on foreign policy, the “war of ideas”, and classical music.
He has also spoken at Westminster on the subjects of:
Deciphering the Middle East: Why the U.S. Usually Gets it Wrong (February 9, 2016)
Information Operations: Successes and Failures (September 6, 2013)
Dangerous Embrace: The United States and the Islamists (May 22, 2012)
The Challenge of Islam to the Catholic Church (February 4, 2010)
The death of Osama bin Laden will significantly affect both sides in the war on terror. The most important questions now are how will al Qaeda and its associated movements respond to the death of their leader, and is the United States safer or in more danger today? The Westminster Institute is bringing together world-renowned authorities and national security practitioners for a one-day special event in Washington, D.C. Together they will provide answers to these questions and also address the broader questions of what impact bin Laden’s death will have on non-violent jihadists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and what strategies can the U.S. employ to turn this battlefield win into a definitive victory.
Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D. is co-author of the just released book, ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. He is Deputy Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and is also Adjunct Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. He formerly served as Professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Harran University in Turkey. He is the former Chief of Counterterrorism and Operations Division for the Turkish National Police with a 20-year career interviewing terrorists.
His work was primarily concerned with terrorist and related activities of ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Hezbollah, the PKK, and other global terrorist organizations and he was responsible for several successful operations against the above-listed terrorist organizations. Dr. Yayla designed and administered counter-terrorism and intelligence activities and operations for precautionary measures in the city of Şanlıurfa, located at the Turkish-Syrian border and at the borders of the current ongoing war-zone in Syria.
Dr. Yayla’s research mainly focuses on terrorism, radicalization, countering violence extremism (CVE) and the Middle East. He has earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees on the subject of terrorism and radicalization at the University of North Texas. He has authored and co-authored several articles and books on the subject of terrorism and violence including First Responders’ Guide to Professionally Interacting with Muslim Communities: Law Enforcement, Emergency and Fire Fighters, Understanding and Responding to Terrorism: A Complete Model to Deal with Terrorism and Terrorism: A Global Perspective.
ISIS is not merely a terrorist organization, it is a malicious idea. ISIS and Al Qaeda have the same ideological underpinning. We need to confront this pernicious thinking with an enlightened, open-minded thought – one that accepts The Other and co-exists with him, enlightened ideas emanating from within Islam.
Mr. Gamal Arabi will introduce a non-usual approach to fighting the Jihadi threats originating from the Muslim World. His approach focuses on the importance and potential of defeating the ideology the terrorist groups and individuals spread through the Middle East and the entire world. Such an ideology, he believes, resides in the currently prevailing interpretations of Islam’s holy books and teachings. Thus, an “enlightenment” program is essential to complement the political and military measures aimed at eradicating terrorist threats.
Mr. Arabi’s intellectual contributions include the publication of two books written in Arabic: “Opening of the Muslim Mind” and “Muslim Woman Dress: Body Covering or Mind Blinding?”. In addition to that he has published several articles on Islamic enlightenment in Arabic newspapers and websites.Mr. Arabi graduated from the University of Khartoum in 1980 and, since then, worked in the area of information technology in many institutions in his country, Sudan. He ended his professional career as director for the information technology department of the Sudanese central bank.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Suzanne K. Scholte is one of the world’s leading activists in the North Korea human rights movement having worked for over 18 years to promote the freedom, human rights and dignity of the North Korean people. Scholte began a program in 1996 to host the first North Korean defectors in the United States to speak out about the atrocities being committed against the people of North Korea including the political prison camps and the horrific treatment of refugees. She has led international efforts to pressure China to end their horrific repatriation policy and has been involved in the rescue of hundreds of North Koreans escaping from North Korea. Currently, she serves as President of the Defense Forum Foundation; Chairman, North Korea Freedom Coalition; Vice-Chairman, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea; and Honorary Chairman, Free North Korea Radio.
North Korea is one of the greatest threats to global security. Armed with nuclear weapons, the rogue state continues to threaten preemptive nuclear strikes against South Korea and Japan. It is actively developing longer-range missiles and may already have warheads small enough to target the homeland. It sponsors terrorism and drug trafficking abroad while deliberately starving its own people at home. High profile defections and infighting within the regime make North Korea more dangerous as the government desperately avoids collapse.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Congressman Frank Wolf was widely acknowledged as the “conscience” of the Congress during his long service in the House of Representatives. First elected in 1980, he left Congress at the end of his 17th term in 2015 to focus exclusively on human rights and religious freedom.
Long before the “Arab Spring” turned into an “Arab Winter,” Congressman Wolf sounded the alarm about the worsening plight of religious minorities, notably the ancient Christian communities in both Iraq and Egypt.
He has recently returned from a trip to Nigeria. Nigeria is on the verge of fracturing along religious fault lines. Ethnic and religious minorities in northern Nigeria face systemic and systematic discrimination. Muslims and Christians in northeastern Nigeria are profoundly and negatively impacted by the terrorist violence pursued by Boko Haram. Christians risk extinction in Nigeria’s northeast.
Congressman Wolf continues to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves. In January 2015, he was appointed the first-ever Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University. That same month he joined the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a newly created religious freedom group, as Distinguished Senior Fellow.
He is the author of the International Religious Freedom Act, which infused America’s first freedom – religious freedom – into U.S. foreign policy by creating the International Religious Freedom Office at the State Department.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
The West desperately needs a broad-based anti-Islamist strategy to combat the global reach of this deadly ideology that threatens freedom and liberty everywhere. Dr. Jasser says that, “American Muslims, living in this unparalleled laboratory of freedom, have a unique moral obligation to lead the way. For too long we have allowed the grievance narratives of Islamist groups to dominate, deflect responsibility, and radicalize. As American Muslims, we need to own the problem and address the root causes of Islamist radicalization.”
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser is the president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), an American think tank built on the premise of advocating for the principles of the U.S. Constitution, liberty and freedom through the separation of mosque and state. He is an ardent activist for universal human rights and against the global movement of political Islam (Islamism) that holds Muslims around the world under the thumb of theocratic regimes.
He routinely briefs members of Congress on the threat to the United States and has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security; the Constitution Sub-Committee of the House Judiciary Committee; and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. He is regularly on national and international media as an expert on Islamist extremism.
Dr. Jasser is a former Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy who served 11 years as a medical officer including a tour as the Staff Internist to the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently, Jasser is a well-respected internist and nuclear cardiologist in Phoenix, Arizona.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Dr. Michael Ledeen’s new book, Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), is co-authored with Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Senator Joseph Lieberman writes, it is a book “worth reading by anyone concerned about the future security of America.” Dr. Ledeen spent more than 20 years at the American Enterprise Institute and is now the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is an internationally renowned scholar on Iran, Iraq, terrorism, and international security.
The media and the current U.S. administration have struggled since 2014 to define ISIS. Some have said they are not Islamic at all, which, while well-meaning, seems to fail on its face as ISIS draws upon Islamic texts to justify their actions. ISIS is an apocalyptic, genocidal, Islamic cult. We must address and combat ISIS as a cult to defeat it.
The media and the current U.S. administration have struggled since 2014 to define ISIS. Some have said it is not Islamic at all, which, while well-meaning, seems to fail on its face as ISIS draws upon Islamic texts to justify its actions. ISIS is an apocalyptic, genocidal, Islamic cult. We must address and combat ISIS as a cult to defeat it.
Jack Rusenko has lived and worked the majority of his adult life in the Arab world, 18 years of which were in Morocco where he focused on educational projects.
In 1993, he initiated a committee to bring the Internet to Morocco, and in 1998 he founded the largest American school in the region: George Washington Academy. During his years in Morocco he did extensive work on interfaith dialogue as a lay leader of the Anglican church, working with religious and governmental leaders. He is personally acquainted with the Moroccan Muslim intellectuals who have taken the lead in fighting Islamist ideology. He is intimately familiar with the Moroccan government’s counter-radicalization efforts. Jack currently resides in Northern Virginia where he leads the George Washington Amity Series, working with Muslim and Evangelical Christian Communities.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Religious extremists in the Middle East, both Sunni and Shia, have succeeded in weaponizing memory. They wield historical precedence to inform and legitimize their actions and strategies. Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi citizen, will discuss how they do this and how to undermine their legitimacy by de-weaponizing precedence.
Nibras Kazimi‘s blog Talisman Gate was one of the most riveting Iraqi blogs written from Baghdad in the midst of its drarma and turmoil and was renowned for its acute political insight. His research focuses on the growing threat of jihadism in the Middle East, as well as prospects for democracy in the region. His primary interest is the national security of Iraq and how threats there are enabled and coordinated by regional Middle Eastern actors and factors.
Kazimi directed the Research Bureau of the Iraqi National Congress in Washington, DC and Baghdad, and was a pro-bono adviser for the Higher National Commission for De-Ba’athification, which he helped establish and staff. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute and wrote a weekly column for The New York Sun and a monthly column for Prospect magazine (UK). He has published several papers on jihadism as well as articles in publications such as Newsweek and the New Republic. He is the author of the monograph Syria Through Jihadist Eyes: A Perfect Enemy (Hoover Institution Press, 2010). He is a member of The Atlantic Council’s 2016 Iraq Task Force.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Our legal architecture for fighting the infiltration of radical Islam is stuck in a pre-1993 Cold War framework. That framework prohibits the exclusion of aliens on the grounds of ideological animus against the U.S. as opposed to terrorist activities. We face an ideology that promotes acts of mass terror and thrives on resistance to assimilation.
The State Department’s strategy for countering violent extremism issued a week ago is, as usual, absent any mention of Islam. What’s more, the U.S. continues to suffer from the lack of any institution within the government from which to actually execute such a strategy, were we to have a sensible one, in terms of the war of ideas.
Andrew C. McCarthy III is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning a series of attacks against New York City landmarks. He also contributed to the prosecutions of terrorists who bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He resigned from the Justice Department in 2003. He is a contributing editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Richard Miniter is the CEO of American Media Institute, a New York Times bestselling author, and a national security columnist for Forbes.
His seventh book, Leading From Behind, examines the consequences of Obama’s foreign policies. Miniter sheds new light on key decisions of the past eight years and the damage inflicted by America’s departure from leadership on the world stage. He is also the author of Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
He was editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe and was a member of the famed investigative team of The Sunday Times of London. As vice president of The Washington Times, Miniter turned around an ailing division and managed a team of 17 journalists. He appears regularly on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and hundreds of radio programs. He is the author of several New York Times bestselling books: Losing bin Laden, Shadow War, Mastermind and Leading From Behind. Miniter has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Forbes, New Republic, National Review and others.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Clare M. Lopez, Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy, is the co-author of the recently published book Gülen and the Gülenist Movement: Turkey’s Islamic Supremacist Cult and its Contributions to the Civilization Jihad. Fethullah Gülen is the head of a vast political network in Turkey that promotes theocracy and has infiltrated the Turkish state. Gülen lives in the U.S. where he has established a significant number of charter schools. Her remarks will include commentary on Gülen’s erstwhile ally, now opponent, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the new Islamic Center in Lanham, MD.
Lopez is a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Canadian Mackenzie Institute. In 2016, she was named to Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign national security advisory team. Since 2013, she has served as a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi. Formerly Vice President of the Intelligence Summit, she was a career operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee from 2005-2006, and has served as a consultant, intelligence analyst, and researcher for a variety of defense firms. She was named a 2011 Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Andrew Doran is co-founder of In Defense of Christians (IDC), a nonprofit organization that advocates for the protection and preservation of Christians in the Middle East.
He presented IDC’s new, nearly-300 page report on the ongoing genocide in the Middle East, which was presented to Secretary of State John Kerry (read the full report here), and the next steps necessary to preserve at-risk Christian communities in Iraq.
The Syrian conflict has cost as many as 470,000 lives with Christian and Yazidi communities nearly wiped out in ISIS-controlled territory. The Christians who remain in Iraq and Syria are in a desperate plight. The State Department has recognized the genocidal intent of the Islamic State but the UK government and the United Nations continue to deny recognition.
Doran has published dozens of articles about U.S. foreign policy and human rights, with a focus on the Middle East. He previously served at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of International Organizations (IO) on the executive secretariat of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. He is an attorney, armed forces veteran, and lives in the Washington, DC area.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Kanan Makiya, born in Baghdad, is the author of the best-selling Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, the book that put Saddam Hussein’s Ba’thist regime in the crosshairs. His new book, The Rope, which was available for signing, is an unflinching novel about Iraqi failure in the wake of the 2003 American invasion. In 2003, Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an NGO based in Baghdad and the U.S. dedicated to documenting and overcoming the legacy of evil from Saddam’s regime. He has collaborated on several films, including “Saddam’s Killing Fields,” which exposed for the first time the campaign of mass murder in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. The Memory Foundation has collected and digitized nearly 10 million pages of Ba’th-era documents. He is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. Makiya has also written The Monument (1991), Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993), and The Rock: A Seventh-Century Tale of Jerusalem (2010).
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Michael Pregent is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer with more than 28 years of experience working security, terrorism, counter-insurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. He served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, served as a liaison officer in Egypt during the 2000 Intifada, as a counter-insurgency intelligence officer at CENTCOM in 2001, and as a company commander in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pregent spent considerable time working malign Iranian influence in Iraq as an advisor to Iraq’s Security and Intelligence apparatus, including an embedded advisory role with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Office of the Commander-in-Chief. He also served as an embedded advisor with the Peshmerga in Mosul 2005-06. As a civilian working for DIA, he served as a political and military advisor to USF-I focusing on reconciliation, the insurgency, and Iranian influence in Iraq from 2007-2011. He was a violent extremism and foreign fighter analyst at CENTCOM from 2011-2013.
Mr. Pregent holds a Masters in Strategic Public Relations from The George Washington University and is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect. He is an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute. He is a senior Middle East analyst, a former adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
He frequently appears as an expert analyst on Shia militias, Iran, Iraq, and ISIS with appearances on BBC World News, Al-Jazeera International, CNN, CNN International, and Fox News.
Dr. Ilan Bermanis Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Councilin Washington, DC. His new book is Iran’s Deadly Ambition: The Islamic Republic’s Quest for Global Power, published by Encounter Books. An expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, he has consulted for both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense, and provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of governmental agencies and congressional offices. He has been called one of America’s “leading experts on the Middle East and Iran” by CNN.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Robert R. Reillyspoke to the Military History Legion at The University Club on February 9. Reilly is the Executive Director of the Westminster Institute. In his 25 years of government service, he has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America, where he had worked the prior decade. Mr. Reilly served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985), and in the U.S. Information Agency both in D.C. and abroad. In the private sector, he spent more than seven years with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, as both national director and then president. He was on active duty as an armored cavalry officer for two years, and attended Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University. He has published widely on foreign policy, the “war of ideas”, and classical music.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an expert in cognitive psychology, is an Islamic thinker and reformer, and one time Islamic extremist from Egypt. He was a member of a radical Islamic organization Jamaa Islameia JI (of Egypt) with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahri, who later became the leader of Al-Qaeda. After being radicalized in the JI (approximately thirty-five years ago), he had an awakening of his human conscience, recognized the threat of Radical Islam, and started to teach modern peaceful interpretations of classical Islamic core texts. Dr. Hamid is the author of Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us: How To Defeat It.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was a third-term congressman from the 4th District, Kansas. He graduated first in his class from West Point in 1986 and then served as a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He also served with the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry in the Fourth Infantry Division.
After leaving active duty, Secretary Pompeo graduated from Harvard Law School, having been an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He later returned to Kansas and founded Thayer Aerospace, where he served as CEO for more than a decade, providing components for commercial and military aircraft. He then became President of Sentry International, an oilfield equipment manufacturing, distribution, and service company. After retiring from Congress, he served as CIA Director before becoming U.S. Secretary of State.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
R. James Woolsey is a Venture Partner with Lux Capital Management. He also Chairs the Board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Woolsey previously served in the U.S. Government on five different occasions, where he held Presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations, most recently (1993-95) as Director of Central Intelligence.
During his 12 years of government service, in addition to heading the CIA and the Intelligence Community, Mr. Woolsey was Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna, 1989-1991.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Dr. John M. Poindextermost recently served as Director of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Poindexter served as National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor for President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1986, and as Military Assistant in the White House prior to that. Dr. Poindexter served 29 years active duty in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of Vice Admiral. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
On October 1, 2013 at 9:00am in the Winners Room of the National Press Club, the leaders of an American delegation of Middle East and counterterrorism experts – most of whom are former U.S. military officers – held a press conference to discuss findings and policy recommendations based on a September 27-30 visit to Cairo that included meetings with Egyptian Minister of Defense el-Sisi, Egyptian military leaders, the head of Egypt’s constitution-drafting body and several leaders of various faiths.
This was the only delegation of U.S. experts on the Middle East, counterterrorism and democracy development to have met with Minister el-Sisi and other leaders of the Egyptian government since former President Morsi was removed on July 3rd.
The delegation was sponsored by The Westminster Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think-tank established in response to the growing threat of ideological extremism and to the perceived need to better understand and engage in the war of ideas. The Institute, which does not accept any government funds, works with the U.S. military, FBI, local law enforcement, NCTC, and DHS, as well as with the State Department and Congress.
Delegation leaders included:
- Lt. Col. Rick Francona (US Air Force, Ret.), a retired intelligence officer with extensive work throughout the Middle East and military analyst for CNN.
- Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, a former Deputy Commanding General for the U.S. Army, Pacific, Command, with expertise in Special Operations, Civil-Military Operations, and counter-terrorism.
- Col. Ken Allard (US Army, Ret.), a former Dean of the U.S. National War College and a widely known commentator on foreign policy and security issues.
- Lt. Col. Bill Cowan(Ret.), a FOX News Channel contributor and internationally acknowledged expert in the areas of terrorism, homeland security, intelligence and military special operations.
Patrick Sookhdeo is a leading expert on jihadist ideology and radical Islam, advising governments around the globe. He has spoken at many military and security events and is the author of numerous books, including Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam, Understanding Shari’a Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics, and Faith, Power, and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, and he is currently Visiting Professor at the Defence Academy of the UK, and Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. He has served as advisor to Permanent Joint Headquarters UK and as Cultural Advisor to RC South, Afghanistan (2010), to ISAF, in Kabul, Afghanistan (2007) and to GOC, Basra, Iraq (2007).
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an expert in cognitive psychology, is an Islamic thinker and reformer, and one time Islamic extremist from Egypt. He was a member of a radical Islamic organization Jamaa Islameia JI (of Egypt) with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawaherri, who later became the leader of Al-Qaeda. After being radicalized in the JI (approximately thirty-five years ago), he had an awakening of his human conscience, recognized the threat of Radical Islam, and started to teach modern peaceful interpretations of classical Islamic core texts. Dr. Hamid is the author of Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us: How To Defeat It. He also spoke at The Westminster Institute on Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works and How to Defeat It.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Professor J. Michael Waller has been a scholar-practitioner in public diplomacy, political warfare, psychological operations and information operations in support of US foreign and military policy for more than 25 years. He was a member of the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, served on the White House Task Force on Central America, was an operative for members of the White House Active Measures Working Group, and has been a consultant to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the U.S. Information Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Special Operations Command.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Stephen Ulph is a member of the board of the Westminster institute and Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation. One of the preeminent analysts of the Islamic world, Mr. Ulph specializes in the analysis of jihadist and Islamist ideology and regularly lectures on aspects of Islamist and Jihadist ideology impacting on Western democracies and the course of the war on terrorism. He is the founder and former editor of Islamic Affairs Analyst and Terrorism Security Monitor for Jane’s Information Group. His publications include an analysis on jihadism in Syria for the CTC, an ideological analysis of the ‘Virtual Border Conflict’ (the online arena for Islamist extremism) for The Borders of Islam, an in-depth examination of the relationship of Islamism to other totalitarian systems of thought in Fighting the Ideological War, and a 4-part reference work, Towards a Curriculum for the Teaching of Jihadist Ideology, available online at the Jamestown Foundation. He is also the Director of The Reform Project and its bi-lingual website Almuslih (‘The Reformer’ www.almuslih.org) which supports Arab reformist writers and promotes their work to an English-language readership.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Robert R. Reilly has been on the board of Westminster since its founding. In his 25 years of government service, he has taught at National Defense University (2007), and served in the Office of The Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006). He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 as Senior Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of information. Before that, he was director of the Voice of America, where he had worked the prior decade. Mr. Reilly served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985), and in the U.S. Information Agency both in D.C. and abroad.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/westminsterinstitute
Recent events in Egypt, Syria, Benghazi, Mali, and Nigeria demonstrate that U.S. policy in the Middle East and Africa is failing—neither is it making Americans safer nor is it helping to bring about regional peace and democracy. The U.S. government built its strategy on the belief that supporting “non-violent” Islamists, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, would weaken the violent Islamists—Al Qaeda and all affiliated movements. With the violence throughout the region signaling a clear failure of this strategy, the United States must radically reassess its strategic approach. This conference brings together leading experts on Islamist ideology, terrorism, and the Middle East, to lay out a new U.S. strategy which will increase domestic security at home, undermine al Qaeda, and stabilize the region.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Diana West's work has appeared in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Post Magazine, and her fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. She has made numerous television and radio appearances, and was recently featured in the Glenn Beck TV documentaries “The Project” and “Rumors of War III.” Her weekly newspaper column is syndicated by Universal Uclick, and West also serves as Washington Correspondent for the European weekly newspaper Dispatch International. West is one of 19 co-authors (including Frank Gaffney, Andrew C. McCarthy and James Woolsey) of Shariah: The Threat to America, a publication of the Center for Security Policy.
Follow us at westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Katharine C. Gorka was the Executive Director of The Westminster Institute. Katharine spent nearly two decades working in Central Europe. She was the regional head of the USAID-funded Democracy Network program, run by the National Forum Foundation, covering the countries of Central Europe and the Balkans. Katharine later co-founded with her husband, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, the Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security (ITDIS), which focused on issues of economic reform and the problems associated with former communists and secret police in post-communist democracies. In her former position as head of the Westminster Institute, Katharine was responsible for helping to define the threat posed by Islamic terrorism and subversion in the United States. She works closely with US government agencies, law enforcement and the intelligence community. Most recently she authored “Sharia Finance and the U.S.Constitution,” and she is co-editor of the volume, Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies from Communism to Islamism.
Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D. serves as the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University where he provides courses and lectures on Irregular Warfare. Previously he was Associate Dean of Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community at National Defense University. He is an internationally recognized authority on issues of national security, irregular warfare, terrorism and democratization and has testified before Congress and briefed the CIA, ODNI, NCTC, NIC, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. His website, TheGorkaBriefing.com, is a collection of his national security commentary and analysis. He served as a subject matter expert for the Office of the US Attorney in Boston for the Tsarnaev trial. Dr. Gorka is an Adjunct Professor with USSOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University where he serves as Lead Instructor for the Special Operations Combating Terrorism (SOCbT) course, as well as the interagency and senior/executive counterterrorism courses. He is also an Adjunct Professor in National Security at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and is a regular instructor with the US Army’s Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg and for the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.
Follow us on westminster-institute.org and youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
Diana West’s work has appeared in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Post Magazine, and her fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. She has made numerous television and radio appearances, and was recently featured in the Glenn Beck TV documentaries “The Project” and “Rumors of War III.” Her weekly newspaper column is syndicated by Universal Uclick, and West also serves as Washington Correspondent for the European weekly newspaper Dispatch International. West is one of 19 co-authors (including Frank Gaffney, Andrew C. McCarthy and James Woolsey) of Shariah:The Threat to America, a publication of the Center for Security Policy.
Follow us on westminster-institute.org and watch our videos at youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute
The OIC has been aggressively campaigning through the United Nations and elsewhere to treat any criticism of Islam or its Prophet as a criminal act. The OIC’s agenda has been highly successful not only in the organization’s member nations where the law is used to persecute religious minorities, but also in Europe, Canada, and throughout the United Nations system. Is America next? What is the Obama Administration doing in response to these actions? Deborah Weiss will provide an update on these efforts and explain why the success of the OIC’s agenda could spell the end of freedom of expression in the West.
Follow us on westminster-institute.org and watch our talks on youtube.com/user/WestminsterInstitute.