WHO: American University experts from the School of International Service
WHAT: Available to analyze and comment on issues at this year’s United Nations General Assembly Meeting WHEN: September 15-ongoing
WHERE: American University, in studio, or phone interviews
Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 15, 2011) – Heads of State will gather in New York on September 19 for the opening of the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to deliver their addresses. This year’s meeting has no shortage of controversy from issues ranging from a Palestinian push for UN membership, to new leaders who emerged from Arab Spring countries not to mention Iran’s firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the financial crises in the U.S. and Europe.
American University’s School of International Service’s experts are available to discuss these and other topics at the UNGA meeting.
UN/International Affairs
David Bosco is an expert on international politics and the United Nations. He writes the Multilateralist blog for Foreign Policy magazine.He served as deputy director of a joint United Nations/NATO project on repatriating refugees in Sarajevo. He is author of Five to Rule Them All, a history of the UN Security Council. He is currently researching a book on the International Criminal Court.
Daniel Esser focuses on governance development and security in fragile settings such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, in particular the politics of institution-building in cities and resulting frictions between local and international agendas. Esser is also interested in global health policy, especially with regard to the emergence of priorities and why these are driven by organizational dynamics rather than scientific evidence. He can also address Millennium Development Goals
James Mittelman is an expert in international affairs and has worked for the United Nations and with civil society organizations. Mittelman is the author of several books on African politics, development, international organization, and globalization. He has had teaching and research appointments in Japan, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa, and lived in Tanzania.
US Foreign Policy
Gordon Adams is an expert on defense and national security policy, the defense policy process, and national security budgets. Adams was the senior White House official for national security and foreign policy budgets, as Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration.
James Goldgeier is the dean of the School of International Service. Goldgeier is an expert in contemporary international relations, American foreign policy, and transatlantic security. Before arriving to AU, he directed an Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has held positions at the State Department, on the National Security Council staff, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Library of Congress, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy among others.
Jordan Tama specializes in the U.S. foreign policy making process, presidential-congressional relations, intelligence reform and counterterrorism policy. He served as a speechwriter for former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, and as a member of the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Expert Advisory Groups for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Israel-Palestine/Middle East/Peacebuilding
Mohammed Abu-Nimer serves as director of AU’s Peacebuilding and Development Institute. He has conducted interreligious conflict resolution training and interfaith dialogue workshops in conflict areas around the world, including Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, the Philippines (Mindanao), and Sri Lanka. Abu-Nimer is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development.
Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, formerly the Pakistan High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the UK and Ireland has been called “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” by the BBC. He has advised General David Petraeus, the late-Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and myriad US agencies and organizations on Islam and foreign policy. He’s also been deeply involved in negotiating the release of the two Americans held by Iran for alleged spying.
Akbar Ahmed Boaz Atzili is an expert on international security with an emphasis on territorial conflicts and the politics of borders, and the international aspects of state weakness and state failure. He is especially interested in the politics of the Middle East and, in particular, Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Josef Olmert served in several senior positions in the Israeli government including director of communications under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and policy advisor to Defense Minister Moshe Arens. Olmert also served diplomatic missions across the world and was a participant at the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 and subsequent Israeli/Syrian peace talks. He was formerly a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv, Hebrew, and Bar-Ilan Universities.
Anthony Wanis St. John researches international negotiation, military negotiations, ceasefires, humanitarian negotiations and peace processes including secret back channel negotiations. He is the author of Back Channel Negotiation: Secrecy in the Middle East Peace Process.
Human Rights
Lori Handrahan possesses over 20 years of practitioner work, in Central Asia, Asia, Africa and the Balkans, focused on gender-based violence, international human rights, humanitarian response, conflict and post-conflict environments, masculinities and men/boys in development and violence, and gender within UN reform and organizational change. She has served as a UN consultant for UNFPA, UNDP, OCHA, UNHCR and UNICEF. She was UNHCR’s first gender expert in emergency operations in Chad during the Darfur genocide and Regional Gender Advisor for UNHCR in The Balkans. She was lead researcher for CARE’s Girls’ Leadership Assessment in Yemen, UNFPA’s Gender-Based Violence Information Management System pilot in Uganda, and OCHA’s Gender Review.
Shadi Mokhtari is an expert in human rights, political Islam and the Middle East. She is especially interested in women’s rights issues in the Middle East and Muslim World. She is the Editor in Chief of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights and the author of After Abu Ghraib: Exploring Human Rights in America and the Middle East
International Economics
Arturo Porzecanski is an expert in international finance, emerging markets and Latin American economics and politics. Porzecanski spent most of his professional career working as an international economist on Wall Street where he served as chief economist for emerging markets at ABN AMRO Bank; chief economist for the Americas at ING Bank; chief emerging-markets economist at Kidder, Peabody & Co.; chief economist at Republic National Bank of New York ; senior economist at J.P. Morgan Bank.
Environment/Energy
Jeff Colgan is an expert in the geopolitics of oil, the resource curse, international security, and international trade. Previously, Colgan worked as a consultant for McKinsey and Company, the Brattle Group, and the World Bank.
Paul Wapner is the director of the Global Environmental Politics Program, and author of Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism, and Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics. His research focuses on environmental thought, transnational environmental activism, environmental ethics, and global environmental politics
HIV/AIDS/Public Health Issues
Rachel Robinson focuses her research on the politics of population, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Her most recent work on Africa explored the process of population policy adoption by African governments and the emergence of reproductive health NGOs. She has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Nigeria, and Namibia.
Thespina Yamanis research focuses on identifying the mechanisms that link social and economic conditions to global health disparities and in designing community-based interventions to improve health among the most vulnerable groups. Specifically, Yamanis conducted qualitative and quantitative field research for the past five years on the social networks of urban men in Tanzania and their influence on the men’s HIV risk behavior and partner violence.
Intercultural Communication
Kyoung-Ah Nam’s research interests include intercultural communication and global leadership development. Nam has extensive experience in intercultural training, consulting, and public relations in North America and in Asia working with international organizations and key transnational companies including the United Nations (New York) and UNESCO (Bangkok). She’s been published in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations.
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