Participants
On October 18, 2006, consecutive "rapid exchange" panel discussions will initiate a rigorous, ongoing effort to find practical solutions for the tensions that threaten our interwoven world.
Participants of the summit are:
Ismael Ahmed (bio)
Executive Director, ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, Michigan)
Ismael Ahmed is executive director of ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), a nationally recognized community-based, non-profit organization, with over 70 different human services and culture programs including social, mental health, educational, cultural, employment, legal and medical services throughout the state of Michigan.
Ahmed holds many volunteer positions, including serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the State of Michigan Early Childhood Investment Corporation; a member of the boards of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and Afropop Worldwide; chairman for Cultural Exchange Network and Immigration Committees for New Detroit; and co-chair of the Arab International Festival.
He is a contributing author to Arabs in America: Myths and Reality and is considered a national expert on immigration, welfare reform, and Arab American issues. He has received the Director of the Year Award from the United Way, and is a contributing writer to the Woodrow Wilson Publication, writing on "Arab Americans' Political Participation in the United States." Under his leadership, ACCESS received the Exemplary Community Service Program Award by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm for outstanding service, programs, and commitment to the advancement of its community along with the Points of Light, an award given by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 for an exemplary nonprofit community.
Hanan Ashrawi (bio)
Palestinian legislator and scholar, former spokesperson of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Process
Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi is the founder and executive committee chair of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy-MIFTAH, and an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Founder and board member of the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity-AMAN, she is also founder and commissioner of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights (PICCR) and served as its first Commissioner General. She was the official spokesperson for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Process and a member of the Leadership Committee. Her book, This Side of Peace, published by Simon & Schuster in 1995, received worldwide acclaim.
Ashrawi has been an ardent advocate of human rights and gender issues. She is the recipient of numerous international peace, human rights and democracy awards, such as the Olof Palme Award, Sydney Peace Prize, the Defender of Democracy Award, the Jane Addams International Women's Leadership Award, the Distinguished Alumna Award of the University of Virginia Women's Center, the Distinguished Lifetime Achievements AUB Alumni Award, and the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation.
Nancy Cantor (bio)
11th Chancellor and President of Syracuse University, as well as Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences
Nancy Cantor is the 11th Chancellor and President of Syracuse University, as well as Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Cantor came to Syracuse from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was chancellor. She has held a variety of administrative positions encompassing all aspects of a research university-from chair of the department of psychology at Princeton to dean of the graduate school and then provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan.
Cantor has been an advocate for racial justice and for diversity in higher education, and has written and lectured widely on these subjects. At the University of Michigan, she was closely involved in the university's defense of affirmative action in the cases Grutter and Gratz, decided by the Supreme Court in 2003. Cantor has lectured and written extensively on liberal education and the creative campus.
Cantor is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She has received the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and the Woman of Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League. Cantor is chair of the board of the American Council on Education.
David Crane (bio)
Former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone; Professor of Practice at Syracuse University College of Law
David M. Crane is a Professor of Practice at Syracuse University College of Law. He served as the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international war crimes tribunal, and was appointed to that position by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, in 2002. With the rank of Undersecretary General, Crane's mandate was to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international human rights committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990s.
Crane served over 30 years in the federal government of the United States. Appointed to the Senior Executive Service of the United States in 1997, he has held numerous key managerial positions including Senior Inspector General, Department of Defense; Assistant General Counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law at the United States Army Judge Advocate General's School. He teaches international criminal law, international law, and national security law at the College of Law. He is a member of the faculty of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, a joint venture with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Crane has received various awards, including the Intelligence Community Gold Seal Medallion, the Department of Defense/DoDIG Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. In 2005, he was awarded the Medal of Merit from Ohio University and the Distinguished Service Award from Syracuse University College of Law for his work in West Africa. In 2006, he received the University's highest alumni honor, the George Arents Pioneer Medal. Prior to his departure from West Africa, Crane was made a Paramount Chief by the Civil Society Organizations of Sierra Leone.
Vartan Gregorian (bio)
President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York
Vartan Gregorian is the 12th president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Gregorian served for nine years as the 16th president of Brown University. For eight years (1981-1989), Gregorian served as a president of the New York Public Library, an institution with a network of four research libraries and 83 circulating libraries.
He serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Human Rights Watch, The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian and Portuguese governments. His numerous civic and academic honors include some 56 honorary degrees, including those from Brown, Dartmouth, Drew, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University, San Francisco State University, and, most recently, Fordham University.
In 1986, Gregorian was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and in 1989 the American Academy of the Institute of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Service to the Arts. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal. In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil award.
Richard Holbrooke (bio)
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Richard Holbrooke was architect of and chief negotiator at the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia and for which he has received numerous awards, including seven Nobel Peace Prize nominations. His best-selling account of that historic negotiation, To End a War, was named one of the 11 best books of 1998 by The New York Times.
Holbrooke served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and was a member of President Clinton's cabinet from 1999 to 2001. In that capacity, he played a central role in the development of U.S. policy toward the United Nations, the Balkans, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and humanitarian crisis issues such as AIDS. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe from 1994-96.
From 1993 to 1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany and later served as President Clinton's Special Envoy to Bosnia and Kosovo and as Special Envoy to Cyprus on a pro-bono basis while a private citizen. From 1977 to 1981, he was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and was in charge of U.S. relations with China when Sino-American relations were normalized in 1978. After joining the Foreign Service in 1962, he held assignments in Vietnam, the State Department and in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.
Holbrooke has written numerous articles and co-authored Counsel to the President, Clark Clifford's memoir, as well as a volume of The Pentagon Papers. He is founding chairman of The American Academy in Berlin, a center for U.S.-German cultural exchange, and president and CEO of the Global Business Council, the business alliance against HIV/AIDS. He is currently vice chairman of Perseus, a leading private equity firm and writes a monthly column for the Washington Post.
Tazim R. Kassam (bio)
Chair of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University and director of the new Muslim Cultures Program at the London center of Syracuse University Abroad
Tazim R. Kassam is chair of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University and director of the new Muslim Cultures Program at Faraday House, the London center of Syracuse University Abroad. A historian of religions specializing in Islamic cultures, Kassam has been a faculty member in the Department of Religion since 2000, serving as director of the department's Graduate Studies Program from 2002-04.
Before coming to Syracuse University, Kassam taught at Middlebury College and Colorado College. She has lectured frequently to broader audiences on understanding Muslims and Islam especially since 9/11. As a progressive and moderate Ismaili Muslim, she has a fundamental commitment to ethics, justice and human rights, and to the public understanding of pluralism in Islam. Her primary research and teaching focuses on music, ritual, literature, gender, and the diversity of intellectual and cultural expressions in Islam. Her first book Songs of Wisdom and Circles of Dance offers an extensive translation and historical analysis of the religious songs of Ismaili Muslims of South Asian background.
She is on several editorial boards, including the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, and is general editor of the biannual Spotlight on Teaching published by the AAR. Her awards include fellowships from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Rami Khouri (bio)
Editor at large of the Beirut-based Middle East regional newspaper The Daily Star; director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at American University of Beirut
Rami George Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. His journalistic work includes writing books and an internationally syndicated column, and he also serves as editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Khouri was a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and was appointed a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. He is a research associate at the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict at SU's Maxwell School, a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Jordan National Museum.
He was executive editor of the Daily Star newspaper from 2003-05, and previously was the editor in chief of the Jordan Times for seven years. He also wrote for many years from Amman, Jordan for leading international publications, including the Financial Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. For 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, and in recent years served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archaeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan. He often comments on Mideast issues in the international media, and lectures frequently at conferences and universities throughout the world.
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo (bio)
Full professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo is a poet, playwright, literary critic, full professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University, where she teaches orature, literature and creative writing. A committed community activist, Mũgo is a passionate advocate for human rights, especially as they have historically been denied to Blacks, women, children, the masses and other marginalized groups.
Mũgo has published six books, eight co-edited supplementary readers for Zimbabwean schools, and edited the journal, Third World in Perspective. Some of her titles include: Daughter of My People, Sing! (poetry); My Mother's Poem and Other Songs (poetry); The Long Illness of Ex-Chief Kiti (play); Visions of Africa (literary criticism) and a play co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi.
Mũgo has written many chapters published in various edited works, three monographs, numerous internationally anthologized poems, reviews, interviews and citations. In March 2004, she was named Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence. The East African Standard Century has listed her among "The Top 100: They Influenced Kenya Most During the 20th Century." She has delivered numerous keynote addresses at major gatherings all over the world.
Itamar Rabinovich (bio)
President of Tel Aviv University
Itamar Rabinovich has been President of Tel Aviv University since 1999. A faculty member since 1971, he has served as director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Dean of Humanities and Rector, among others. He is the incumbent of the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern History.
From 1992-1996, Rabinovich served as Israel's Ambassador to Washington, D.C., and Chief Negotiator with Syria. He has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Toronto, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. He was an A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University from 1997-2002. He is the author of several books, including Syria Under the Ba'ath; The War for Lebanon; The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations; The Brink of Peace: Israel and Syria; and Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century. Rabinovich is a member of the Trilateral Commission, chairman of the Advisory Council of the Wexner Israel Program, and chairman of the board of the "Heseg" Project.
Dennis Ross (bio)
Author and diplomat, Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Dennis Ross is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow. He was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations and was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement. He also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together.
Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, he served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. In that capacity, he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition.
During the Reagan administration, he served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. Ross was awarded the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by President Clinton, and Secretaries of State James Baker and Madeleine Albright presented him with the State Department's highest award.
He has published extensively on the former Soviet Union, arms control, and the greater Middle East, contributing numerous chapters to anthologies. He is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and U.S. News and World Report, as well as a foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News Channel. His book, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, August 2004), offers comprehensive analytical and personal insight into the Middle East peace process.
William Safire (bio)
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist; chairman, The Dana Foundation
William Safire is a man of many careers: journalist, speechwriter, historian, novelist, lexicographer. He worked on the first Eisenhower Presidential campaign and later became a senior speechwriter in the Nixon White House. He left there in time to write Before The Fall, a history of the pre-Watergate White House.
As a lexicographer, Safire is author of Safire's New Political Dictionary, a half-million-word study of the words that have inspired and inflamed the electorate.
As an historical novelist, Safire wrote Freedom, about the Civil War, and his latest novel is Scandalmonger, about the origins of America's press freedom. His anthology of the world's great speeches, Lend Me Your Ears, is recognized as a classic.
Safire ended his op-ed column of three decades in The New York Times in 2005, and continues his weekly column "On Language" in The Times Magazine. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, and was for nine years a member of the Pulitzer Board.
Safire is chairman of the Dana Foundation, active in funding brain science, neuro-immunology research and arts education. He attended Syracuse University and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University in 1978. He is a member of the University's Board of Trustees and is on the Board of Visitors of The College of Arts and Sciences.
Diane Weathers (bio)
Journalist and writer; former editor in chief, Essence magazine
Diane Weathers is the former editor in chief of Essence magazine, America's premiere mass circulation magazine for African American women. In that position, Weathers launched several attention-getting editorial series that generated strong, favorable responses from readers and other media. These included "The War on Girls," a series examining the challenges and pressures on adolescents and teens, and "Take Back the Music," a widely heralded exploration of the misogyny in rap music and music videos.
She has served as articles editor of Redbook, associate editor of Consumer Reports, correspondent for the Washington, D.C., Bureau of Newsweek, and public information officer for the United Nations World Food Program in Rome, Italy. In that position, she worked closely with the press assisting them in covering U.N. relief operations. Her work included coordinating and escorting reporting missions throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Immediately after the Persian Gulf War, Weathers escorted reporters from the BBC and Le Monde throughout Northern and Southern Iraq. These reporters were among the first to report on post-war conditions outside of Baghdad. She conducted similar missions to Cambodia, the West Bank and Gaza. She also spent two months as the Kenya-based agency spokesperson for the first Operation Lifeline Sudan, the United Nation's initial effort to broker a ceasefire in order to provide relief supplies to people in war-torn southern Sudan.
A graduate of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, her articles have appeared in many major media outlets including: Essence, where she continues to serve as editor at large; The International Herald Tribune; Family Circle; The New York Times; and the Financial Times.
Weathers is a member of the boards of trustees of the Brady Center and the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, and Syracuse University.