May 11, 2004
Speaker Biographies
James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at AEI and the host of TechCentralStation.com. In June 2003, he was appointed to the Advisory Board on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. He also writes a syndicated financial column for the Washington Post business section every Sunday. Mr. Glassman is the author of The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown) and Dow 36,000 (Times Books), a bestseller coauthored with the economist and AEI scholar Kevin A. Hassett. Previously, Mr. Glassman was editor of Roll Call, president of The Atlantic Monthly, executive vice president of U.S. News & World Report, publisher of The New Republic, and executive editor of the Washingtonian.
Mouafac Harb is news director of Radio Sawa, part of the U.S. government sponsored Middle East Radio Network. Mr. Harb is also news director of the new U.S.-funded Arabic language satellite channel Al-Hurra. Previously, Harb was the Washington bureau chief of the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat.
Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (formerly the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press) in Washington, DC. From 1979 to 1989, Hr. Kohut was president of The Gallup Organization, and in 1989 he founded the Princeton Survey Research Associates, an attitude and opinion research firm specializing in media, politics, and public policy studies. He served as founding director of surveys for the Times Mirror Center from 1990-1992, and was named its director in 1993. Mr. Kohut was president of American Association of Public Opinion Research from 1994-1995, and from 2000-2001 was president of the National Council on Public Polls, a member of the Market Research Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the co-author of three books: The Diminishing Divide; The People, The Press and Politics; and Estranged Friends? The Transatlantic Consequences of Societal Change.
Salameh Nematt is the Washington Bureau Chief for the London-based Al-Hayat. Previously he was the managing editor for a joint venture between Al-Hayat and LBC satellite channel, as well as Al-Hayat's bureau chief in Amman, Jordan and their London diplomatic editor. He also worked as a correspondent in Amman for the BBC Arabic service (1988-1999). In 1999, he briefly served as Head of the Strategic Studies Unit at the Jordanian Royal Court. Mr. Nematt has covered political and security developments in the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the second Gulf War and the peace process. He writes a regular weekly column for Al-Hayat.
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. Before coming to AEI, she served for 10 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 staff writer for Insight Magazine, as well as an editorial assistant for the Los Angeles Times and Reuters in Jerusalem.
Jeremy M. Sharp is an analyst in Middle East affairs for the Congressional Research Service, where he provides analysis on Arab political, military, and diplomatic affairs and U.S. policy in the Middle East to members of Congress and their staffs. Mr. Sharp is the author of several congressional reports on U.S. foreign aid to the Middle East, the Arab media, and U.S. public diplomacy, as well as the promotion of socio-economic reforms in the region.
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Previously, he was director of the Voice of America and editor-in-chief of Readers' Digest; he has more than 35 years of journalistic experience. He has also served as the chairman of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (1985), as member of the U.S. Board for International Broadcasting (1986-1994), and as a member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (2000-present). In 1995, he was named Virginia Press Association's Virginian of the Year, and he is a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. Mr. Tomlinson is the co-author of P.O.W., a history of American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
Congressman Frank Wolf is serving in his 12th term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies. He is the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a bipartisan organization of nearly 200 House members that identifies and works to alleviate human rights abuses worldwide. In 1998, he authored the bill creating the National Commission on Terrorism. He traveled to Iraq twice in 2003. He represents the 10th District of Virginia, and is the most senior of the 11 members of the House of Representatives from Virginia.
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