Speaker biographies

Walid Jumblatt is a Cedar Revolution leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party in Lebanon. He is also a member of Lebanon’s parliament and the leader of its Druze community. Jumblatt is one of Lebanon’s most prominent politicians and is widely respected throughout the country. He is allied with the March 14 Forces, an anti-Syrian coalition which formed in the wake of the March 2005 Cedar Revolution. Mr. Jumblatt has called for both Hezbollah’s disarmament and the establishment of an international tribunal to try the murderers of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

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.

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