What Are We to Think about the U.N.?
Inaugural Seminar
February 19, 2004
Speaker Biographies
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at AEI, where she researches U.S. foreign and defense policy, multinational organizations, and European politics. She is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and member of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet. Her many books include Dictatorship and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (1982) and The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State . . . and Other Surprises (1990). She served as U.S. representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2003.
AEI resident scholar Joshua Muravchik is an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics, and he previously served as member of the Maryland State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is the author of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (2002); The Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism (1996); Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny (1991); and The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (1986). His monograph, Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising, was published in 2003.
Thomas R. Pickering is senior vice president for international relations at Boeing Company. He assumed this position in January 2001 after retiring his role as U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs. He oversees the company’s international affairs, including those with foreign governments. He is a member of the company’s Executive Council and reports to the chairman. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he has served as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Mr. Pickering has also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Timothy E. Wirth is the president of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund. He has organized and led the formulation of the foundation’s mission and program priorities, which include the environment, women and population, children’s health and peace, security, and human rights. He began his political career as a White House fellow under President Lyndon Johnson and was deputy assistant secretary for education in the Nixon administration. In 1975, Mr. Wirth became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Colorado’s second congressional district until1987. In 1987, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he focused on environmental issues, especially global climate change and population stabilization. He has served in the U.S. Department of State as the first under secretary for global affairs (1993–1997). In this position, he coordinated U.S. foreign policy in the areas of refugees, population, environment, science, human rights, and narcotics.
