Conference Participants

Mohammed Ayoob

Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University. His books include The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (1995), The Many Faces of Political Islam (2008), and Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia (2009). He has served as a consultant to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change appointed by the UN Secretary General, and the Ford Foundation.

 

Erica Chenoweth

Erica Chenoweth is Assistant Professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and Director of the Program on Terrorism and Insurgency Research at Korbel’s Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. She is the co-editor of Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict (2010) and the co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011), for which she and her co-author, Maria Stephan, won the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. She hosts the blog Rational Insurgent and co-hosts the blog Political Violence @ a Glance.

 

Tamra Pearson d’Estreé

Tamra Pearson d’Estreé is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Conflict Resolution and Co Director of the Conflict Resolution Institute at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. She is also Director of the Center for Research & Practice in Korbel’s Conflict Resolution Program. Her research interests include the role of social identity needs in conflict and conflict resolution, especially in international/intercommunal conflict, negotiation, mediation, and cross-cultural interactions.

 

Richard Falk

Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting
Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, served on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and acted as counsel to Ethiopia and Liberia in the Southwest Africa Case before the International Court of Justice. His many books include The International Law of Civil War (1971), Human Rights and State Sovereignty (1981), Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order After Iraq (2007), Achieving Human Rights (2008), International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (2010), and Unlocking the Middle East: The Writings of Richard Falk (2002). On his 80th birthday he launched a blog, Citizen Pilgrimage, which is at richardfalk.wordpress.com.

 

Tom Farer

Tom Farer was Dean of DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies (1996-2010) and is now a University Professor. He is the former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human rights of the OAS, the University of New Mexico, and the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs. He has been an official of the State and Defense Departments, a consultant to the UN, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment and has trained an African Police Force in law and self-defense. He has taught international law and international relations at Colombia, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, among other universities, and has published 12 books and monographs. His many articles have appeared in such journals as Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New York Review of Books, and the Columbia and Harvard Law Reviews.

 

Kristen Gillespie

Kristen Gillespie is a TV, radio, and print journalist who has been based in Syria and Jordan for the last decade, covering stories from Egypt to Yemen, including Lebanon/Israel and Iraq wars. She has reported for NPR, USA Today, The Nation, and The Daily Star of Lebanon. She now heads the English news website for the Syrian opposition channel, Syria al-Shaab (“Syria of the People”), which operates a virtual group newsroom via Skype whereby citizen journalists inside Syria and Jordan post videos and news items from all over Syria and communicate about the country’s future.

 

Nader Hashemi

Nader Hashemi is Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and the Director of DU’s new Center for Middle East Studies. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (2009) and the co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (2011). He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, and the BBC, among other media outlets.

 

Amb. Christopher R. Hill

Ambassador Christopher R. Hill is the Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at The University of Denver, a position he has held since September 2010. He is a former career diplomat, a four-time ambassador, nominated by three presidents, whose last post was as Ambassador to Iraq, April 2009 until August 2010. Prior to Iraq, Hill served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2005 until 2009 during which he was also the head of the U.S. delegation to the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Earlier, he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. Previously he served as U.S. Ambassador to Poland (2000-2004), Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia (1996-1999) and Special Envoy to Kosovo (1998-1999). He also served as a Special Assistant to the President and a Senior Director on the staff of the National Security Council, 1999-2000.

 

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff was Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2008 to 2011 and served in the Parliament of Canada from 2006 to 2011. He now holds a joint appointment at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he is Professor of Practice. From 2000 to 2006 Ignatieff was Director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He served on the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and helped author its report, The Responsibility to Protect. His books include The Needs of Strangers: An Essay on the Philosophy of Human Needs (1983), Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism (1994), The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (1998), Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998), Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (2000), The Rights Revolution (2000), and Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001).

 

Rafif Jouejati

Rafif Jouejati is the English spokeswoman for the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, a network of activists throughout the country. She is also the director of FREE-Syria, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that focuses on women’s empowerment, and a member of the Day After Project, which is developing a transition plan for the country. She has written for the New York Times, Waging Nonviolence, and other publications, and has been interviewed on Charlie Rose, Democracy Now! and other programs.

 

Oliver Kaplan

Oliver Kaplan is a Lecturer at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He was a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and an affiliate of Stanford University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict project. His book project, “Civilian Autonomy in Civil War,” examines how civilian communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence. He has conducted fieldwork in Colombia and The Philippines. His research has been published in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest.

 

Joshua Landis

Joshua Landis is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma and Director of the university’s Center for Middle East Studies. He is President of the Syrian Studies Association and writes and edits “SyriaComment.com,” a daily newsletter on Syrian politics that attracts some 200,000 page-reads a month and is widely read by officials in Syria, Europe and Washington. He is interviewed frequently on NPR, PBS and the BBC and is quoted regularly in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

 

Ved Nanda

Ved Nanda is Evans University Professor and Thompson G. Marsh Professor of Law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. He is Past President of the World Jurist Association (and now its Honorary President), former honorary Vice President of the American Society of International Law, and a member of the advisory council of the United States Institute of Human Rights. In 2006 the Ved Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law was launched. In 2004, he was awarded the “Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award for Community Peace Building” from Soka Gakkai International and Morehouse College.

 

Thomas Pierret

Thomas Pierret is a Lecturer in Contemporary Islam in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is the author of the just-published Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution and is co-editor of Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (2012). His research interests include sectarianism, Islamic activism, and the management of religion by Middle Eastern states.

 

Kenneth Roth

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading
international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world and has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. He is the co-editor of Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective (2005).

 

Andrea Stanton

Andrea Stanton is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, focusing on 20th and 21st century Islam in the Middle East and beyond. She serves on the Board of the Syrian Studies Association and edits its bi-annual Bulletin, and is Editor of H-Levant, a scholarly listserv. She serves as the Religious Studies Department’s Undergraduate Adviser and on the Advisory Committee for the Intercultural Global Studies Minor. Her first book, This is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine, will be published by the University of Texas Press in 2013.

 

Stephen Starr

Stephen Starr is a freelance journalist and the author of Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising (2012). He lived in Syria for five years until last February, reporting on the revolt for the Washington Post, the Times of London, ForeignPolicy.com, The Irish Times, and other publications. He is the editor of the Near East Quarterly and is currently a journalism fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

 

Radwan Ziadeh

Radwan Ziadeh was a key figure in the “Damascus Spring,” a period of intense debate about politics and calls for reform in Syria after the death of President Hafez al-Assad in 2000. He went on to direct the foreign relations office of the Syrian National Council, the main umbrella for the Syrian opposition. He is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington. He is the managing editor of the Transitional Justice in the Arab World Project, a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. His most recent book is Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East (2011).