September 29, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Christopher DeMuth has been president of AEI since 1986. He previously practiced law, was a consulting economist, taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and held positions in the Reagan and Nixon administrations. His articles have appeared in Commentary, The Public Interest, the Harvard Law Review, the Wall Street Journal, and The American Enterprise.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.  A former Middle Eastern specialist for the CIA, Mr. Gerecht is a contributor to Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy (editors Robert Kagan and William Kristol; Encounter Books, 2000) and is the author under the pseudonym Edward Shirley of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a senior fellow at AEI, researches defense, national security, the United Nations, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Russian region.  Dr. Kirkpatrick is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and member of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet. Last year, she was the chair of the U.S. Delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission.

Laith Kubba is the senior program officer for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Endowment of Democracy and a contributor to the debates on Iraq, Islam, and democratization in the Muslim world.  Before joining the NED, he was the Director of International Relations at the Al Khoei Foundation.  In 1992, he coordinated the INC meeting in Vienna, was its spokesman, and served at its first executive committee.  He established and ran a NED funded project, Islam21, at the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue and served on the boards of other Middle Eastern groups: the Iraq Foundation and the Arab Organization for Human Rights.  In the 1980s, he was the director of Al Aalam, a London based pan-Arab weekly magazine, and Africa Events, a monthly London-based magazine.

Michael A. Ledeen, a resident scholar at AEI, is an expert on U.S. foreign policy.  His research areas include state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, the Middle East, Europe (Italy), U.S.-China relations, intelligence, and Africa (Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe).  A former consultant to the National Security Council and to the U.S. State and Defense Departments, he has also written on leadership and the use of power.  He is the author of The War against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened, Where We Are Now, How We'll Win (St. Martin's Press, 2002).

Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the AEI, researches the United Nations, neoconservatism, the history of socialism and communism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and global democracy, terrorism, and the Bush Doctrine.  Dr. Muravchik is an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics and an adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy.  He is the author of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Encounter Books, 2002).

Theologian, author, and former U.S. ambassador, Michael Novak currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at AEI. He is the 1994 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Mr. Novak has written twenty-five influential books on the philosophy and theology of culture, especially the essential elements of a free society. His writings have appeared in every major Western language, and in Bengali, Korean, and Japanese. His masterpiece, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, has been reprinted in Latin America and was published underground in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, China, and Hungary. For his work and influence, he has received dozens of prestigious awards. Mr. Novak's latest articles and descriptions of his major writings can be found at www.michaelnovak.net. His most recent book, The Universal Hunger for Liberty, will be discussed at this evening’s forum.

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