EVENTS

Date:	Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Time:	4:30 PM -- 6:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. Mr. Aron was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union in June 1978. He has taught at Georgetown University and has contributed numerous articles on Russian affairs to newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. Mr. Aron also writes Russian Outlook, AEI's quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia's post-Soviet transition. He is a frequent guest of television and radio talk shows and has been interviewed on 60 minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR's All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, among others. Mr. Aron is the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin's Press, 2000), and Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989–2006 (AEI Press, 2007). He is at work on a book about ideas and ideals that inspired and shaped the latest Russian revolution (1987-91), to be published by Yale University Press.

Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. From 1994 until 2006 he worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a senior associate and then director of the Russian and Eurasian program. A leading specialist on post-communist economic transformation--especially in Russia and Ukraine--Mr. Åslund has served as a senior economic adviser to the governments of Russia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Geneva, and Moscow. From 1989 to 1994, he was a professor at and founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. Mr. Åslund is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. A prolific writer, he has authored eight books, including two this year, and edited twelve. He has also published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Angelos Pangratis is the deputy head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the USA. Previously, from 2003 until 2005, he was the ambassador and head of the European Commission’s delegation to Argentina. Between 1995 and 1997 he worked in senior positions in the delegations of the European Commission in South Africa (1995-97) and South Korea (1990-94). In his career at the EU headquarters in Brussels, he has headed various units, including the unit responsible for relations with China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, and Mongolia (1998-2003); the unit for personnel and budget of the directorate general for external relations and trade policy (1997-98); and the investigation teams of the antidumping and anticircumvention division (1987-90). Mr. Pangratis has also represented the European Commission at numerous multilateral organizations, including the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Club de Paris. Mr. Pangratis has lectured at universities in the Czech Republic, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Korea, South Africa, Argentina, and the United States and he has had articles and interviews published in many countries.

Steven Pifer is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he focuses on Ukraine and Russia, and a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic & International Studies. A retired foreign service officer, he spent more than twenty-five years with the U.S. Department of State, where he served as the deputy assistant secretary of state, with responsibility for Russia and Ukraine; ambassador to Ukraine; special assistant to the president; and senior National Security Council director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Ambassador Pifer also served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow, and London, as well as with the U.S. delegation to the intermediate-range nuclear forces negotiations in Geneva.

Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar at AEI, where he is director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a Washington-based foreign and defense policy think tank. Previously, Mr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the post of executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House. Mr. Schmitt is the coeditor, with Thomas Donnelly, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007). Mr. Schmitt has written books and articles on a number of topics, including the founding of America, the U.S. presidency, intelligence, and national security affairs.