Speaker biographies

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Since 1998, he has written AEI’s Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition. He has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), Newsday, The National Interest, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Times Literary Supplement. A frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, he has commented on Russian affairs on 60 Minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International, C-SPAN, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation.

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for international security affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In that capacity, he led a team that formulated and implemented defense policies and programs toward, and for, these portfolio countries. Before his service at the Department of Defense, Mr. Blumenthal practiced law in New York and was a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
 
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the co-editor, with Gary Schmitt, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007) and is also the author of The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005), Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004) and several other books. From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the Committee on Armed Services in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times and Defense News.

Lawrence B. Lindsey is president and chief executive officer of The Lindsey Group. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Before forming The Lindsey Group, he held the position of assistant to the president and director of the National Economic Council at the White House and was the chief economic adviser to candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. Mr. Lindsey also served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as special assistant to the president for domestic economic policy during the George H.W. Bush administration, and as senior staff economist for tax policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan's first term. Mr. Lindsey served for five years on the economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at AEI. From 1997 until 2001 he was managing director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm. He is the author of numerous articles and two books: The Growth Experiment and Economic Puppet Masters. Mr. Lindsey is currently a visiting scholar at AEI.

Mark B. McClellan, M.D., is a visiting senior fellow at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Dr. McClellan served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from March 2004 to October 2006. He previously served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration beginning in November 2002. During 2001 and 2002, Dr. McClellan served in the White House as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he advised the president on domestic economic issues and was a senior policy director for health care and related economic issues. From 1998–1999, he was deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, in which capacity he supervised economic analysis and policy development on a wide range of domestic policy issues. Dr. McClellan is on leave from Stanford University, where he was associate professor of economics and associate professor of medicine at Stanford Medical School. At Stanford Medical School, Dr. McClellan was a practicing internist and director of the Program on Health Outcomes Research. He was previously a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar at AEI. Additionally, he was a member of the National Cancer Policy Board of the National Academy of Sciences; associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics; and co-principal investigator of the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of the health and economic well-being of older Americans. Dr. McClellan’s research studies have addressed measuring and improving the quality of health care, the economic and policy factors influencing medical treatment decisions and health outcomes, estimating the effects of medical treatments, technological change in health care and its consequences for health and medical expenditures, and the relationship between health and economic well-being. He has twice received the Arrow Award for Outstanding Research in Health Economics, and he is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C. and the Middle East.
 
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Between 2002 and 2004, Mr. Rubin worked as a staff advisor for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He previously lectured in history at Yale University, Hebrew University, and three different universities in northern Iraq. Mr. Rubin is the co-author (with Patrick Clawson) of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave, 2005), and the author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (The Washington Institute, 2001).

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

Alan D. Viard is a resident scholar at AEI. Prior to joining AEI, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University. He has also worked for the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress. Viard has written on a wide variety of tax and budget issues.

Peter J. Wallison joined AEI in January 1999 as a resident fellow and as co-director of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation. He previously practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. He also served as general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee and participated in the Treasury Department’s efforts to deal with the debt held by less developed countries. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.

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