Chairman of the Program Council
Prof. Nicholas Kittrie
Nicholas Kittrie, Ph.D., is
an international lawyer and a distinguished academic. Currently
University Professor at the American University, Washington College of
Law. Has served as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary
Committee, and is an expert in American and international public and
criminal law. Past president of the American Society of Criminology,
former dean of the Washington College of Law, and chair of the United
Nations Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, he is
the author and editor of over fifteen books and numerous articles. He
frequently appears in mass media to deal with topics such as political
offenders, terrorist activities, war crimes, drugs and alcohol,
extradition, penology and criminal sentencing. Educated at the London
School of Economics (U.K.), the University of Cairo (Egypt) and the
Universities of Kansas, Chicago and Georgetown (USA), he is fluent in
several languages. He has traveled extensively and has lectured at
universities and congresses in Europe, Asia and Africa. He has served as
legal consultant to several foreign governments and to the United States
Vice-President's Commission on Terrorism. Among Kittrie's books (as
author or editor) are Rebels With A Cause: The Minds and Morality of
Political Offenders; The Tree of Liberty: A Documentary History of
Rebellion and Political Crime in America; The War Against Authority:
From the Crisis of Legitimacy to a New Social Order; The Right to Be
Different: Deviance and Enforced Therapy; Crimes and Punishments:
International Criminal Law and Procedure; The Future of Peace in the
Twenty-First Century, and The Laws of War and the Laws of Peace; The
Mentally Disabled and the Law. He currently serves as
University Professor at the American University in Washington, D.C.
Members of the Program
Council
(in alphabetical order)
Dr. Larry Atkins, Member of the Program
Council
G. Lawrence Atkins has more than 30 years of experience in
public policy development, policy analysis and strategic planning at the
local, state, and federal level and the private sector. He was founder
and president of Health Policy Analysts, where he advises a number of
Fortune 100 companies, pharmaceutical, insurance and other health
industry companies and trade associations. He coordinated the Corporate
Health Care Coalition (CHCC), a national coalition of 25 multi-state,
self-insured companies that joined together in 1993 to represent the
concerns of large corporate purchasers of health care benefits. CHCC
members have been in the forefront of efforts to ensure high-quality,
cost-effective health care and are a major force in on-going private
sector efforts to improve the healthcare delivery system through
provider accountability. He was also directing the Employer Health Care
Innovation Project, which coordinates state legislative and policy
activities of self-insured corporate purchasers on ERISA issues. He
holds a doctorate in social welfare policy with an emphasis on economics
of aging from Brandeis University. He currently serves as Executive
Director for Public Policy & Reimbursement at the Schering Plough
Corporation.
Dr. Avi Beker, Member of the Program Council
Avi Beker received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York specializing in international security, arms
control and the United Nations. He was a member of the Israeli mission
to the United Nations (1977-82). For twenty years Beker served in the
World Jewish Congress, as the executive director in Israel, the
international director and finally as the Secretary General, the chief
executive officer of the umbrella organization of world Jewish
communities. Beker participated and led international campaigns against
anti-Semitism, Holocaust restitution, defending Jewish human rights and
advocating for rights of Jews from Arab countries. Under the auspices of
the WJC, he founded the Israel Council for Foreign Relations and the
Institute for Research of the WJC which he subsequently headed. He has
published books and articles on international politics and security,
disarmament, Israel’s foreign policy and Jewish affairs. He lectures
regularly on these topics in Israel and abroad. On December 2007 Beker
received the Boris Smolar award from the American Jewish distribution
Committee (JDC) for his research studies and essays on international
Jewish affairs. In 2004-7 he lectured to MA students of Diplomacy and
headed the program on Jewish Diplomacy at the school of Government and
Policy at Tel Aviv University. His book The Chosen: the History of an
Idea and the Anatomy of an Obsession was published on May 2008 by
Palgrave-Macmillan.
Tom Brenneman, Member of the Program Council
Tom Brenneman serves as Policy Associate for Migration &
Human Security with the 3D Security Initiative. He is a founding member
of Cooperative By Design, LLC. an Arizona-based Peacebuilding Consortium
with whom he serves in peacebuilding working with faith communities,
social services and law enforcement. Working in the field of
peace-building and restorative justice since 1992, Tom holds a degree in
social work from Eastern Mennonite University and is currently a
graduate student in sociology at American University. He is a co-founder
of the Sonoran Borderlands Peacebuilding Initiative (SBPI) and related
Centro de Paz para Ambos Nogales (CEPAN), conflict resolution
initiatives addressing migration and security concerns along the
Arizona-Sonora border.
Dr. Maria Cseh, Member of the Program Council
Maria Cseh, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Human and
Organizational Learning (HOL) at The George Washington University,
Coordinator of the HOL Doctoral Program, and Lecturer at the University
of Pécs, Hungary. Her cross-cultural and international research studies
on workplace learning, organizational development and change, and
leadership were published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters
and presented at international conferences. She is a member of the
Advisory Board for four international journals, serves on the Board of
Directors of the Academy of Human Resource Development and consults on
organization development and change and evaluation projects with profit
and non-profit organizations.
Soren Jessen-Petersen, Member of the Program
Council
Soren Jessen-Petersen, is a Head of the Washington Office of
the Independent Diplomat and a Guest Scholar at the United States
Institute of Peace (USIP) where he has been writing a book on the
interplay between politics and humanitarian consequences. He is also a
lecturer at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Since November 2006 been served as Special Representative of the UN
Secretary-General in Kosovo and head of UNMIK, including serving at the
level of UN Under Secretary-General. He has also served as the Chairman
of the European Union Stability Pact's Migration, Asylum, Refugees
Regional Initiative (MARRI), as Assistant High Commissioner at UN High
Commission for Refugees, headquarters in Geneva, and as Director of the
UNHCR Liaison Office at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Jonathan Greenwald, Member of the Program
Council
Jon Greenwald is a veteran foreign service officer and former
director of the U.S. Department of State's Office of Counter-Terrorism.
During a distinguished diplomatic career Greenwald held embassy and
consular posts throughout Europe. From 1991-93, in the Office of
Counter-Terrorism, he devised diplomatic strategies for dealing with
Libya, and led a mission during the Gulf War. Most recently, Greenwald
served in Brussels, where he helped negotiate the New Transatlantic
Agenda on U.S.-European Union ties that President Clinton signed in
1995, defining U.S. political and trade engagements in Europe. He
currently serves as Vice President of the International Crisis Group
(ICG), where he supervises the ICG research and reporting cycle, working
with program and project directors around the world to develop and
maintain a steady stream of targeted reports and briefing papers on the
full range of crises and subjects that the International Crisis Group
covers. He maintains senior-level contacts with Washington-based
officials and diplomats, frequently speaks to student groups and
participates in conferences and seminars in the U.S. and Europe. He also
undertakes advocacy trips worldwide, most recently to Iran. He is a
graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and has
written extensively on foreign policy issues.
Dr. Esther Ezra Lopatin, Member of the
Program Council
Esther Ezra Lopatin, Ph.D., is currently a Professorial
Lecturer at The George Washington University (teaching European Union
Politics and International Relations Theory) and was recently a Visiting
Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM)
at Georgetown University. Graduate of Department of Political Science,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she received her Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Munich, where she examined the effect of
EU integration on the development of European immigration and asylum
policy. Prior to her graduation, she was a Transatlantic Fellow at the
German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington D.C., examining
the impact of the changed international security situation on
transatlantic cooperation in the field of immigration. Esther was
working for Immigration and Assimilation Committee of the Knesset
(Israeli Parliament). She also organized a series of panel discussions
with officials from both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on how to
foster transatlantic dialog in the fields of migration and security in
the post 9/11 security environment. She speaks fluently English, German,
Hebrew, Arabic and working French.
Dr. Larry Hajime Shinagawa, Member of the
Program Council
Larry Hajime Shinagawa, Ph.D., has been appointed Director of
Asian American Studies and Associate Professor of American Studies. For
the past 30 years, he has been involved in the fields of sociology,
American studies, multicultural education, ethnic studies, and Asian
American studies. Prior to coming to the University of Maryland, he was
the Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity
and Associate Professor of the Sociology Department of Ithaca College.
As the Center Director, he was responsible for the development of
academic programs in African New World Studies, Asian American Studies,
Latino Studies, Native American Studies, and Comparative American and
Ethnic Studies at Ithaca College.
Dr. Moshe Weisblum, Member of the Program
Council
Dr. Moshe Pinchas Weisblum is a scholar, a rabbi and social
leader. He was a volunteer for the elite paratrooper unit in the Israeli
Defense Forces and he finished his army career as a commissioned
officer, with the rank of Major. He is an author of many books and
publications, including: "Table Talk: Biblical Questions and Answers",
"Ruth Talk”, “The Hermeneutics of Medieval Jewish Thought: Understanding
the Linguistic Codes of Rashi and Nachmanides". In 2005, he was awarded
the Sidney Breitbart Prize in Jewish philosophy from Baltimore Hebrew
University. He was a professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion in
Manhattan, NY. He is a member of the New York Board of Rabbis, New
Jersey Board of Rabbis, Union of Traditional Judaism, and Morasha
Rabbinic fellowship. Dr. Weisblum serves also as a consultant to the
media as commentator on social and political issues. He holds a Masters
Degree in Public Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University, New
Jersey, and a doctorate in philosophy from Baltimore Hebrew University. |
