Speaker biographies
Ellen Bork is acting executive director at the Project for the New American Century. From 1996 to 1998, she was the senior professional staff member for Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 1998 to 1999, she served as counsel to Martin Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, and from 2001 to 2002, she was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels. In the mid-1980s she served in the Department of State and the Department of Education. She has served as an election observer in Cambodia and Indonesia. Ms. Bork's articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Humanitarian Affairs Review, and Forward. She writes a column for the New York Sun.
Stephen Cohen has been a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution since 1998. Mr. Cohen was a faculty member at the University of Illinois from 1965 to 1998. From 1992–93 he was a scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation in New Delhi, and from 1985–87 he was a member of the policy planning staff of the U.S. Department of State, where he dealt with south Asia. He has taught at Andhra University (India), Keio University (Tokyo), and Georgetown University, and now teaches in the south Asian program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Mr. Cohen has served on numerous study groups examining Asia sponsored by the Asia Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Foundation, and the National Bureau of Asian Research. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control and is a trustee of the Public Education Center. Mr. Cohen was the cofounder and chair of the workshop on security, technology and arms control for younger south Asian and Chinese strategists, held for the past ten years in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and China, and was a founding member of the research committee of the south Asian strategic organization called the Regional Centre for Security Studies, located in Colombo. Mr. Cohen has written, coauthored, or edited ten books, including The Idea of Pakistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2004), India: Emerging Power (Brookings Institution Press, 2002), The Indian Army (Oxford University Press, 2001), and The Pakistan Army (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Jared Genser represents both national and international clients before Congress and the executive branch, and counsels them on a variety of issues, such as foreign affairs, appropriations, and international trade at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. In 2005, Mr. Genser led a team of DLA Piper lawyers who were commissioned by former Czech Republic president Václav Havel and archbishop emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu to produce the report A Threat to the Peace: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in Burma. Independently, Mr. Genser is also president of Freedom Now, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization which seeks to free nonviolent prisoners of conscience around the world through legal, political, and public relations advocacy efforts. Freedom Now has successfully secured the releases of five prisoners of conscience, among them James Mawdsley, a British national who was sentenced to seventeen years in solitary confinement in Burma for handing out pro-democracy leaflets, and Ayub Masih, a Pakistani Christian who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Genser was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, the global strategic consulting firm. In addition, he formerly worked as an assistant to the political advisor to the mayor of Jerusalem.
Sidney Jones and is the International Crisis Group project director for Southeast Asia, a position in which she leads analysts based in Jakarta who prepare analytical reports on the sources of conflict and violence in the region, with a particular focus on Indonesia. She has examined separatist conflicts (Aceh and Papua, Mindanao), communal conflicts (Poso, Moluccas), and ethnic conflict (Kalimantan). Her team has also looked at Islamic radicalism, producing a series of reports on Jemaah Islamiyah and its operations in Indonesia and the Philippines. It also looks at issues of security-sector reform and decentralization in Indonesia. Ms. Jones frequently briefs the media, international organizations, and government representatives on these issues. She was a program officer for the Ford Foundation from 1977–1984, an Indonesia-Philippines researcher at Amnesty International from 1985–1988, and the Asia director at Human Rights Watch from 1989–2002. She frequently interviews with local and international media outlets and has published several articles with the Asian Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and the International Herald Tribune.
Marvin Ott is a professor of national security policy at the National War College of the National Defense University. He served as a civilian in Vietnam (Banmethout, Darlac Province) in 1965. His professional positions have included associate professor at Mount Holyoke College, senior research and management positions at the Office of Technology Assessment (U.S. Congress), senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, consultant at the National Academy of Sciences, southeast Asia chairperson for the Foreign Service Institute, and deputy staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters as well as over a hundred op-eds, principally on east Asian and intelligence topics. He appears as a regular commentator on CNN's Business Asia.
Panitan Wattanayagorn is an associate professor of international relations at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1993. Mr. Panitan is currently advisor to several defense agencies, including the Defense Research and Development Office of the Royal Thai Army and the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command. In 2004, he was appointed by the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission to help draft the new Ministry of Defense legislation. Between 2002–03, he served as a member of the National Human Rights Commission's Subcommittee on Terrorism Law. During 2001–2003, he was program advisor at the National Science and Technology Development Agency, where he developed key security performance indicators for the National Economic and Social Development Advisory Council. From 1997–2001, Mr. Panitan worked in the Prime Minister's Office as head of a special working group on defense for the prime minister of Defencekpai. He also served as advisor to the Strategic Institute at the National Security Council from 1999–2000 and was a member of the House of Representatives' Military Affairs Subcommittee from 1998–2000. Between 1994 and 1996, Mr. Panitan was director of the Defense Studies Program at the Institute of Security and International Studies. He is the author of several articles and chapters on foreign, security, and defense policies of Thailand and Southeast Asian countries.
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