Biden’s Foreign Policy Challenge: Change or Continuity – Session 1 of 2 China, Arab World, “Endless Wars”

Speakers for this event

• Charles Dunne

  Charles Dunne

  Charles W. Dunne is an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Relations at George Washington University. He is affiliated with the Arab Center Washington D.C. as a non-resident fellow and is a scholar with the Middle East Institute. From 2011-2015, he was Freedom House’s Director of Middle East and North Africa programs, where he focused on human rights and democracy promotion in the region. Before joining Freedom House, he spent 24 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, with overseas tours in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Madras (Chennai), India. He was Foreign Policy Adviser to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy at the Joint Staff in the Pentagon (2007-2008), and Director for Iraq at the National Security Council from 2005-2007. He served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, where he contributed to the development of presidential initiatives to advance political reform and democracy in the Broader Middle East and North Africa. He is a member of the Democracy and Human Rights Working Group of the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

• Christopher Hill

  Christopher Hill

  Christopher R. Hill Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Serbia

  Christopher R. Hill arrived in Belgrade on March 31, 2022. He previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Korea, Poland, and Macedonia, as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and as Head of the U.S. delegation to the 6 Party Talks on North Korea. Earlier in his diplomatic career, Hill was the special envoy for the Kosovo crisis and prior to that was a member of the U.S. negotiating team whose efforts led to the Dayton Peace Agreement, ending the Bosnian war. Following his retirement from the Foreign Service in 2010, Hill was Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and then Chief Advisor to the Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy, at the University of Denver. In 2021, Hill was named the George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In October 2021, he was called upon to return to diplomatic service when President Biden nominated him to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia. Hill earned a B.A. at Bowdoin College and an M.S. at the Naval War College. The recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert S. Frasure Award for Peace Negotiations and the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Award. Hill speaks Serbian, Polish, Macedonian and French. He is joined in Belgrade by his wife, Julie.

• Douglas Herbert

  Douglas Herbert

  Douglas Herbert, a New York-born, Paris-based TV commentator with France 24, parlayed his early love for languages, literature, and travel into a journalism career that has taken him from New York and Philadelphia to Estonia, Russia, the UK and, for the past 17 years, France. Douglas's first "posting" was his childhood bedroom on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he edited a hand-scribbled Sunday newspaper - "House News" - for a readership of two: his mom and dad. Over a decade later, as a rookie reporter in Moscow following the Soviet collapse, Douglas scored his first big news scoop by revealing the source of the sesame seeds on the Big Mac buns at Russia's first McDonald's. (Spoiler alert: Finland.) As a freelance writer in the Moscow Bureau of The New York Times in the mid-90s, Douglas reported on a catastrophic oil spill in Russia's frigid Far North, near the Arctic Circle. Back in the US, he segued from Kremlin intrigue...to covering a county courthouse, and a swathe of working-class industrial towns, as a suburban reporter for a large metropolitan daily, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Douglas subsequently moved to CNN, covering business and markets for the network's financial news website in New York City, before crossing the Pond to work at CNN International, in London, as a multimedia feature reporter specializing in EU issues. At France 24, a Paris-based news channel that he joined at its launch in 2006, Douglas offers his perspective on international affairs, working in both English and French. He has covered numerous G7 and G20 summits, from Mexico to Québec to Northern Ireland, along with four US presidential elections. Last month, Douglas helped lead France 24's coverage of the Biden-Harris inauguration, from Washington, DC. Douglas received his Master’s Degree in Russian Studies from Harvard University, having studied at the Moscow Energy Institute in the late 1980s, in the heyday of Mikhail Gorbachev's 'perestroika' and 'glasnost' reforms. He is a regular conference speaker on US politics and French and Russian society. In recent years, Douglas has also taught a graduate-level fact-checking course at Paris's Sciences Po journalism school.

• Michele Dunne

  Michele Dunne

  Michele Dunne directs the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, where her research focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries as well as U.S. policies in the region. A career-long Middle East specialist, she spent nearly 20 years at the U.S. Department of State, including assignments at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, and on the National Security Council staff. She holds a Ph.D. in Arabic language from Georgetown University.

• William Jordan

  William Jordan

  Retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Independent Analyst William Jordan served for 30 years (1981-2011) as a political officer in the U.S. Foreign Service specializing in the Arab world and France.  His overseas assignments included Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; Tunis, Tunisia; Damascus, Syria; Amman, Jordan; Paris, France; and Algiers, Algeria, where he served in his final posting as Deputy Chief of Mission. Mr. Jordan’s responsibilities in the Arab world included reporting and analyzing foreign policy trends, especially as they related to the United States, as well as internal politics, human rights conditions, and the rise of radical Islam as a political force.  From 1997-2001, Mr. Jordan was the reporting officer in Paris for labor issues and internal politics.  He returned to Paris in 2007-2009 to work on the Near East and North Africa as well as Russia (including during and after the 2008 Georgia crisis).  From 2002-2007, Mr. Jordan focused his attention on North Africa, notably as Director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs. Since retiring from the Foreign Service, Mr. Jordan has lived in Paris, where, in addition to his work as an independent analyst and consultant, he occasionally comments on the Arab world, northwest Africa, France, and U.S. national security policy for France24, RFI, and the BBC.  He is a board member of and has participated in the annual Saint Petersburg, FL, Conference on World Affairs in addition to lecturing frequently to numerous audiences, including the French Ecole militaire and at the Paris campus of New York University. From May 2020-December 2021, Mr. Jordan served as president of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO).