Speakers

Keynote Speaker

HISHAM MELHEM is the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya, the Dubai based satellite channel.  He is also the correspondent for Annahar, the leading Lebanese daily.  For four years he hosted Across the Ocean, a weekly current affairs program on US-Arab relations for Al-Arabiya.

Mr. Melhem received his BA in Philosophy from Villanova University in 1976 and  was awarded the 1998 Alumni Medallion, an honor bestowed upon alumni of the University for exceptional professional and personal achievements.  From 1976 to 1979, Mr. Melhem enrolled in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University for a doctorate degree.

Mr. Melhem's writings appear in publications ranging from the literary journal Al-Mawaqef to the Los Angeles Times, and in magazines as Foreign Policy;  Middle East Report;  Middle East Insight; and Middle East Policy.  He is the author of Dual Containment: The Demise of A Fallacy, published by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.  In addition, Mr. Melhem appears regularly on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, The Charlie Rose Show, and National Public Radio.

Mr. Melhem speaks regularly for college audiences and think-tanks, interest groups on US-Arab relations, political Islam, intra-Arab relations, Arab-Israeli issues, media in the Arab World, Arab images in American media, U.S. public policies toward the Arab World, and other related topics.

Mr. Melhem has interviewed many American and international public figures, including President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Mr. Melhem had the first formal interview (one-on-one) with President Barack Obama on January 26, 2009, a week after the Inauguration.

Jillian Schwedler

Dr. Jillian Schwedler is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

She is author of Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge 2006) and most recently editor (with Dr. Laleh Khalili) of Policing and Prisons in the Middle East (Columbia/Hurst 2010).  Her articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Middle East Policy, Middle East Report, Journal of Democracy, and Social Movement Studies (among others).  Dr. Schwedler was formerly member of the editorial committee and chair of the board of directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), publishers of Middle East Report. She has conducted research in Jordan, Yemen, and Egypt and has traveled extensively throughout the region.  She is currently finishing a book manuscript tentatively titled “Protesting Jordan: Space, Law, Dissent,” which examines political protests and policing in the Hashemite Kingdom from 1946 to the present.

 Michele Dunne

Michele Dunne is Director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Dr. Dunne has served in the White House on the National Security Council staff, on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and in its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and as a diplomat in Cairo and Jerusalem. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, she was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she edited the Arab Reform Bulletin and carried out research on Arab politics and U.S. policies. She holds a doctorate in Arabic language and linguistics from Georgetown University, where she has served as a visiting professor of Arabic and Arab Studies. Her research interests include Arab politics, political transitions, economic reform, Egypt, Israeli-Palestinian issues, and U.S. and European policies in the Middle East.  She co-chairs the Working Group on Egypt, a bipartisan group of experts established in February 2010 to mobilize U.S. government attention to the forces of change in that country.  Her recent publications include “Egypt’s Imperiled Transition: Pakistan on the Nile?” (Atlantic Council Issue Brief, November 2011) and “American and European Reponses to the Arab Spring: What’s the Big Idea?” (The Washington Quarterly. September 2011).

Jon B. Alterman

Jon  is director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Prior to joining CSIS, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. He is a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and served as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission). In addition to his policy work, he teaches Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the George Washington University. Before entering government, he was a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 1993 to 1997, Jon was an award-winning teacher at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in history. He also worked as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY), responsible for foreign policy and defense.

Jon has lectured in more than 25 countries on subjects related to the Middle East and U.S. policy toward the region. He is the author or coauthor of four books on the Middle East and the editor of two more. In addition to his academic work, he is sought out as a consultant to business and government and is a frequent commentator in print, on radio, and on television. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Asharq al-Awsat, and other major publications. He is on the Board of Advisory Editors of the Middle East Journal, is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Arab Media and Society, and is a former international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is now a life member. He received his A.B. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.