EVENTS

Date:	Monday, April 13, 2009
Time:	9:00 AM -- 12:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

 Speaker biographies

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. He has served on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2005, serving as vice chairman in 2007, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Board for the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Previously, Mr. Blumenthal was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In addition to writing for AEI's Asian Outlook series, he has written articles and op-eds for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently working on a manuscript that will examine divides within the China policymaking community.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI, where he studies foreign policy and international organizations. Ambassador Bolton served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006. From May 2001 to May 2005, he was the under secretary of state for arms control and international security. Prior to this, Ambassador Bolton was the senior vice president of AEI and also held a number of positions in public service, including assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, 1989-93; assistant attorney general, 1985-89; assistant administrator for program and policy coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 1982-83; and USAID general counsel, 1981-82. From 1983 to 1985, Ambassador Bolton was an associate and then member of Covington & Burling. He is the author of Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad (Simon and Schuster, 2007).

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of AEI, a position he assumed on January 1, 2009. He was previously the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a visiting scholar at AEI. Mr. Brooks researches and writes about the connections between culture, politics, and economic life in America. He is the author of several books, including Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism (Basic Books, 2006), Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America--and How We Can Get More of It (Basic Books, 2008), and Social Entrepreneurship: A Modern Approach to Social Value Creation (Prentice Hall, 2008).

C. J. Chen is currently an adjunct professor in the department of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He also serves as a board member and adviser to various business and academic concerns. From 2004 to 2006, Ambassador Chen represented the Republic of China (ROC) at the European Union and in Belgium. From 2000 to 2004, he was the ROC’s de facto ambassador to the United States, serving as representative and head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C. Prior to this, Ambassador Chen was the ROC's minister of foreign affairs during the Lee Teng-hui administration. Ambassador Chen's first diplomatic tour of duty to the United States was from 1971 to 1979, when he was based in the Embassy of the Republic of China in Washington, D.C. From 1979 to 1980, he assumed the role of director of public affairs, responsible for congressional liaison, with the Coordination Council for North American Affairs office in the United States, the successor agency to the ROC Embassy in Washington, D.C. He was one of the key participants conducting negotiations with the U.S. government on future relations between the United States and Taiwan and providing Taiwan's perspective to the U.S. Congress during the course of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act.

Louisa Coan Greve is program director for East Asia at the National Endowment for Democracy, a grant-making organization that supports prodemocracy and human-rights organizations around the world. She served on the Amnesty International USA board of directors from 1993 to 1998 and as a volunteer China and Mongolia specialist from 1990 to 1999. As a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. Greve was a participant in the 2001-2002 roundtable on U.S. national security. She has testified before several congressional committees and has given numerous media interviews on human rights in China and democracy promotion in Asia. She has traveled, studied, and worked in China on numerous occasions since 1980.

Christopher Griffin is a legislative assistant for defense policy to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-D-Conn.). Previously, he was a research fellow at AEI, where he wrote on American defense and foreign policy with a focus on East Asia, and a contributing editor to the Armed Forces Journal, where he wrote about the U.S. defense industry and global arms trade. Before joining AEI, he was a research assistant in the strategic studies department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers was appointed president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council in 2000, and he has worked to develop the council's role as a partner for American businesses in Asia. Mr. Hammond-Chambers has worked for the council since October 1994, following a position as an associate for development at the Center for Security Policy. He also sits on the advisory boards of Redwood Partners International, the Sabatier Group, and the Pacific Star Fund. He is a trustee of Fettes College and a member of the National Committee on United States–China Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. Before coming to AEI, Ms. Pletka served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Since joining AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She was a member of the congressionally mandated U.S. Institute of Peace Task Force on the United Nations, which released its final report in 2005. She recently coedited Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats (AEI Press, 2008) and coauthored the 2008 AEI report Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, where he studies development issues. He has spent more than three decades in public service and higher education. Most recently, Mr. Wolfowitz served as president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of defense. Prior to that, he was dean and professor of international relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has also served as under secretary of defense for policy (1989-93) and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia (1986-89). Mr. Wolfowitz was the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs (1982-86) and director of policy planning at the Department of State. He worked as deputy assistant secretary of defense for regional programs at the Department of Defense and as special assistant to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1973-77).