Ambassador Dennis Ross is The Washington Institute's counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow. For more than twelve years, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. A highly skilled diplomat, Ambassador Ross was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement; he also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together.

Mark Allen studied Arabic at Oxford and worked in HM's Foreign Service 1973-2004. He served in the UAE, Egypt and Jordan and his work took him all over the Arab world. He is a special advisor to BP plc and a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He was made CMG in 2002 and knighted in 2005. His most recent book, Arabs: A New Perspective came out in 2006. (No Photo)

Steven A. Cook is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Cook is the author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (2007). Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–2002) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–96). He has published widely in a variety of foreign policy journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers. Dr. Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and both an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Avraham Sela is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University and a research fellow of the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. He earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1987). Before joining the Hebrew University faculty in 1987 he served as a career officer in the research division of the IDF Intelligence Branch (1970-1986). In this capacity, he took part in the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks in the late 1970s as well as in the Israeli-Lebanese military talks in the mid-1980s. His main fields of research are inter-Arab politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and contemporary Palestinian society and politics.

 

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the Middle East Quarterly (a publication of the Middle East Forum). A native of Philadelphia, Rubin earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1999. His dissertation, The Making of Modern Iran, 1858-1909: Communications, Telegraph and Society won Yale's John Addison Porter Prize. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including from the Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he was a Soref Fellow in 1999-2000. Between 2002 and 2004, Rubin worked as a country director for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, from which he was seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Rubin is co-author of Eternal Iran (2005) and Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (2001), in addition to numerous scholarly, policy, and opinion articles. He has appeared on CNN, Fox, BBC, MSNBC, C-Span's Washington Journal, and ABC's Nightline.

Dr. Volker Perthes is the Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and Chairman and Director of the board of Stiftung Wissensschaft und Politik. His research focuses on German and European Foreign and Security Policy, Transatlantic Relations, and the Middle East. His most recent book is Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change (2004).

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. An expert in Middle East affairs, he has focused since 9/11 on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (1997) and The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy (2004). He is a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other publications. Mr. Gerecht formerly held positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dr. Karim Sadjadpour is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Sadjadpour joined Carnegie after four years as the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Tehran and Washington, D.C. A leading researcher on Iran, Dr. Sadjadpour has conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials, and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others. He is a regular contributor to BBC World TV and radio, CNN, National Public Radio, and PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and has also written in the Washington Post, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and New Republic. He is frequently called upon to brief U.S. and EU officials about Middle Eastern affairs. Dr. Sadjadpour was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and has been the recipient of numerous academic awards, including a Fulbright scholarship. (No Photo)

David Makovsky is a senior fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Mr. Makovsky is most recently the author, with Jeffrey White, of the Washington Institute Policy Focus Lessons and Implications of the Israel-Hizballah War: A Preliminary Assessment (2006). Before joining The Washington Institute, Mr. Makovsky was an award-winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to 2000. He is the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post and was diplomatic correspondent for Israel's leading daily Haaretz. He was awarded the National Press Club's 1994 Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence for a cover story on PLO finances that he co-wrote for the magazine. In July 1994, with the personal intervention of then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Mr. Makovsky became the first journalist writing for an Israeli publication to visit Damascus.

Professor Yezid Sayigh BSc (Chemistry, Beirut), PhD (War Studies, London), is Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. From 1994 to 2003 he was Assistant Director of Studies at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He additionally directed the Middle East programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London (1998-2003). Professor Sayigh is a member of the editorial or advisory boards of Nations and Nationalism, Cambridge Middle East Studies, Third World Quarterly, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), among others. He has been a consultant to various bodies including the European Commission, Department for International Development (DfID), and World Bank, and continues to work in this capacity on Middle East issues and on reform and negotiations in the Palestinian Authority. He is currently editing a book on The Military and the State in the Middle East: Towards A New Political Sociology that explores how this relationship has been transformed by economic globalization, privatization of violence, and redefinition of international security.