Speaker biographies
Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His previous positions include five years as senior research professor at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, and four years each as senior economist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Clawson has published op-ed articles in major newspapers including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. In addition to his frequent appearances on television and radio, he has authored more than thirty scholarly articles on the Middle East in such journals as Foreign Affairs, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Journal, and Les Cahiers de l’Orient. He has also testified before Congressional committees more than a dozen times. Currently serving as senior editor of Middle East Quarterly, he was previously editor of Orbis, a quarterly review of foreign affairs.
Senator Ted Deutch (D-FL) has long been a leader in community and philanthropic organizations. As a freshman state senator in the minority, Deutch successfully introduced and passed legislation to help end and prevent future genocide by taking a stand against rogue regimes from Iran and Sudan. In the local community, Deutch has built upon his work promoting a strong U.S.-Israel relationship by establishing a government relations committee at the South Palm Beach County Jewish Federation. He was on the national leadership committee of the Lieberman for President campaign and also organized multiple campaign events for the Kerry presidential campaign and those of other national Democratic candidates, including Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), and members of Congress Robert Wexler (D-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). Senator Deutch is an attorney with the law firm of Broad and Cassel.
Omeed Jafari is research associate in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. His research areas include American foreign policy, Iran, energy, and global investment activity in terror-sponsoring states. Jafari has been with AEI since August 2006.
Senator Craig Johnson (D-NY) was elected to the Senate in 2007 as the first Democratic representative of the Seventh Senate District in a century. Johnson came to the Senate to fight for property tax relief on behalf of Nassau County’s overtaxed homeowners, and to reform Albany’s broken political process. His agenda of change earned him spots on the Senate Local Government, Ethics, and Environmental Conservation Committees. He is the sponsor of the Iran Economic Divestment Act of 2007. Prior to being elected to the Senate, Johnson served four terms in the Nassau County legislature. There, as the youngest-ever chairman of the Finance Committee, he oversaw a $2.2 billion budget and was part of the team that brought Nassau’s finances back from the brink of bankruptcy. Johnson is of counsel with the law firm of Jaspan Schlesinger Hoffman LLP in Garden City, New York.
Ken Katzman is a specialist in Middle East affairs for the Congressional Research Service, where he provides analysis to members of Congress and their staffs on Persian Gulf political, military, and diplomatic affairs, and on U.S. policy in that region. Katzman has served in government and the private sector as an analyst in Persian Gulf affairs, with special emphasis on Iran and Iraq.
Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994 and re-elected in 2000 and 2006, after having served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the Senate’s Finance Committee, where he is the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, and on the Judiciary Committee, where he is the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security. As chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, he directs the communications operations of Senate Republicans, and is the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership.
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, 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.
Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1997. He currently serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, for which he is chairman, and on the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Sherman also serves on the Budget Committee and the Committee on Financial Services.
Sarah Steelman is the first Republican woman in Missouri history to be elected to the office of state treasurer. She became Missouri’s forty-fourth state treasurer on January 10, 2005. Steelman is responsible for the management of more than $20 billion in Missouri’s annual revenue. She oversees the investment of approximately $4 billion in the state’s portfolio. In her first months in office, she eliminated foreign-owned investment companies from the state’s preferred list of financial broker-dealers. To protect tax dollars against terror-related security risk, she won approval for screening measures to prevent investments in companies with financial ties to the governments of nations the U.S. State Department has identified as sponsors of terrorism. She established the nation’s first terror-screened fund handling public investments. In 1998 and 2002, Steelman was elected to serve as the senator for the Sixteenth Senatorial District. Previously, Steelman was deputy director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’s Division of Geology and Land Survey. She also worked as an economist for the Department of Revenue and as an adjunct professor in economics at Lincoln University.
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