AEI welcomed several new scholars and fellows in September. Hassan Mneimneh, the former director of the Iraq Memory Foundation, joined AEI to work on a project tracking the online presence and ideology of jihadist organizations. New research fellow Jeffrey Azarva will work on this project as well. Lawrence M. Mead of New York University will be a visiting scholar this fall, working on a project to develop government-supported men's work programs without creating a new mass entitlement. Mead is the author of several important books, including Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship and The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America.

Resident Scholar Leon Aron

In August, shortly after the Russian invasion of Georgia, AEI hosted a forum on the conflict. Frederick W. Kagan spoke about Russia's aims, and Leon Aron explained that the invasion confirms that Vladimir Putin retains power in the Kremlin. AEI.org features Kagan's frequent updates on the situation.

Research Fellow Alex Brill

Starting in September, AEI scholars write a monthly column called "On the Margin" in the venerable publication Tax Notes. The first column, on effective marginal tax rates, was written by Alan D. Viard and Alex Brill.

AEI and the Brookings Institution cosponsored events at both parties' respective conventions in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul to explore how the presidential nominees would govern. The sessions, moderated by AEI's Norman J. Ornstein and Brookings's Thomas E. Mann, featured Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); former senators Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.); and some of the campaign trail's top journalists.

Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within, chronicles insider debates surrounding President Bush's decision to change the Iraq strategy in early 2007. Woodward characterizes the Joint Chiefs of Staff as being out of the loop. Former U.S. Army chief of staff General Peter Schoomaker "was outraged when he saw news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, had briefed the president Dec. 11 about a new Iraq strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank," Woodward writes. "'When does AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?' Schoomaker [is reported to have] asked at the next chiefs' meeting." The surge strategy has seen violence fall dramatically and set the stage for a peaceful civil life to emerge in Iraq.

Resident Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In September, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir, Infidel, received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which recognizes work on race and human diversity. In an interview with the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, where the award ceremony was held, she said, "Bigotry is not only a white man's disease. It's a universal disease, and the only way to get rid of it is through self-examination. And there is not self-examination if there is no self."

Resident Scholar Kenneth P. Green

In his latest book, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, released in September, Newt Gingrich urges Congress to open oil reserves to exploration and remove impediments to drilling. In their most recent Energy and Environment Outlook, Kenneth P. Green and Abigail Haddad throw cold water on the presidential candidates' "economically undesirable" goal of energy independence.

Nicholas Eberstadt moderated a September event on the "missing girl" crisis in Asia, in which millions of baby girls have been aborted because of a preference for boys. Panelists, including Ambassador Mark Lagon of the State Department, explored the dimensions and consequences of the unnatural gender imbalance in China and India and what concerned parties can do about it.

A new biography, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics, describes the former congressman and defense secretary's long career. Author Dale Van Atta also notes Laird's early involvement with AEI in the 1950s and his subsequent efforts to promote the Institute's work. AEI's great friend, the late Gerald Ford, wrote the foreword to the volume before he died--the only time he wrote an introduction to a book. In it, he praised Laird's great service to the country.