Speaker Biographies

Transforming U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World

AEI-Baker Institute for Public Policy Joint Event

Friday, October 3, 2003

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian is the founding director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and the chairman of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. A leading expert on the complex political, security, economic, religious, and ethnic issues of the Middle East, he played key roles in the Arab-Israeli peace process, the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, successful efforts to end the civil war in Lebanon, the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, and the establishment of collective and bilateral security arrangements in the Persian Gulf. Ambassador Djerejian was U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the Clinton and George H. W. Bush administrations, and U.S. ambassador to the Syrian Arab Republic in the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations. He also served as deputy assistant secretary of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, as special assistant to the president and deputy press secretary for foreign affairs in the White House, and as deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the Kingdom of Jordan.

James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at AEI, the host of TechCentralStation.com, and a member of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. He also writes a syndicated financial column, which appears on the front page of the Washington Post business section every Sunday and is published in other newspapers, including the New York Daily News and the International Herald Tribune. Mr. Glassman is the author of The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown), which Business Week called the best financial book of the 2002 season and Barron’s selected as one of the year’s ten best. His first book, Dow 36,000 (Times Books), a bestseller coauthored with the economist and AEI scholar Kevin A. Hassett, was praised by Newsweek’s Allan Sloan for its "wonderfully clear explanations of financial theory [and] excellent advice on general investing approaches." Mr. Glassman has given frequent congressional testimony, recently on subjects as varied as telecommunications policy, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, Social Security reform, and personal investing. He is a popular speaker on economic, political, and investing topics.

Penn Kemble is a senior scholar at Freedom House and director of a Freedom House and the Foundation for Democratic Education joint project on democracy and the global economy. In March 2002, he was named chair of the International Eminent Persons Group on Slavery, Abduction, and Forced Servitude in Sudan. During the Clinton administration, Mr. Kemble was special representative of the secretary of State for the Community of Democracies Initiative and deputy director and chief operating officer (and later acting director) of the U.S. Information Agency. He cofounded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and was president of Prodemca. Mr. Kemble was a producer and writer at WETA-TV and a special assistant and speechwriter for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). His articles have been published in Commentary and the New Republic and on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at AEI and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. He has written extensively about democracy, human rights, the role of ideas and ideologies in international politics, and America’s role in the post-Cold-War world. Mr. Muravchik’s articles appear frequently in Commentary, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. His newest book, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, was published in March 2002. Mr. Muravchik is also the author of The Imperative of American Leadership (1996), News Coverage of the Sandinista Revolution (1988), and The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (1986). He serves as an adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy and is an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics.