Tip Sheet: Experts Available to Discuss Latest Israel/Hamas Attacks

Newswise — David Waldner

An associate professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics and former director of Middle East Studies, Waldner is teaching a January Term course, “Nation-Building in Iraq: Past, Present, Future,” and is the author of “State Building and Late Development.” His research examines the causes of different forms of state formation and the consequences of variations in state-building trajectories for economic development and democratization. He is a specialist in Middle East politics, as well as Latin America, Africa and Asia.

W. Nathaniel Howell

Nat Howell, who was the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion, is the John Minor Maury Jr. Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Institute for Global Policy Research and the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies Program.

Howell has said that the Bush administration's conflating of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the global war against Al Qaeda has blurred the purposes of the anti-terror campaign and made a "mess" of U.S. Middle East policy. Arabs see the U.S. as not being an honest broker and insist that Palestinians are due fair treatment, too, he said.