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The 2012 Palestine Center Annual Conference
Where
The Palestine Center
2425 Virginia Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20037
202.338.1290
Map
click here
When
Nov 9, 2012
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
The 2012 Palestine Center Annual Conference
"Where are We Headed?
The U.S. and Middle East After Elections"
Friday, 9 November 2012
You can watch this event live here
Schedule of Events
Times may change/panels may be added
8:00 - 9:00 a.m.
Registration
9:00 - 9:15 a.m.
Welcome Remarks
Registration
9:00 - 9:15 a.m.
Welcome Remarks
9:15 - 11:00 a.m.
Panel I - U.S. Policy After the Election: A Reason for Change?
Panel I - U.S. Policy After the Election: A Reason for Change?
What will the
outcome of the Presidential election mean for
U.S. Middle East policy? If re-elected, will
President Obama maintain similar policies or
make significant adjustments? If Governor
Romney is elected, what changes can we expect?
Panelists will discuss the impact of the
election on U.S. policy towards various actors
in the region.
Hrair Balian
Director of the Conflict Resolution Program
The Carter Center
Mark Perry
Independent Author
Helena Cobban
Independent Publisher and Journalist
11:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Coffee and Pastry Break
Coffee and Pastry Break
11:30 a.m. - 1:00
p.m.
Panel II -
Taking Stock in the Arab Uprisings: Where are
we headed?
Uprisings have led to the
disappearance of some governments and the
emergence of others. The political map of the
region is changing and many questions remain
about which direction the region is headed.
Panelists will discuss the foreign policies of
states in the region, the role of regional
organizations like the Gulf Corporation Council
and the impact of election outcomes in shaping
policy changes.
Nathan Brown
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
George Washington University
Adel Iskandar
Scholar of Media and Communications, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Georgetown University
Kristin Diwan
Assistant Professor of Comparative and Regional Studies, School of International Service
American University
1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Break for Lunch
Break for Lunch
1:45 - 3:15
p.m.
Panel III - Public Discourse on Palestine:
Reasons for Optimism?
As occupation
persists and technology develops, a growing
number of Americans are challenging the
long-held Israeli narrative of events and
history in the region. We ask what changes
there have been in U.S. media coverage, what
role new and social media plays in that and
what we can expect of these trends going
forward.
Samer
Badawi
Communications Manager
Institute for Middle East Understanding
Communications Manager
Institute for Middle East Understanding
Will Youmans
Assistant
Professor of Media
George Washington University
The Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center
George Washington University
Yousef Munayyer
Executive DirectorThe Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center
3:20 - 4:45 p.m.
Panel IV - Palestinian Strategy: Reform, Representation, and a New Framework
Panel IV - Palestinian Strategy: Reform, Representation, and a New Framework
Two decades
after the start of the Oslo process there are
more settlers and settlements in the West Bank
today than ever before. Panelists will discuss
whether the two-state solution is still viable,
what challenges Palestinian reconciliation and
representation present and evaluate Palestinian
strategies for liberation.
Noura Erakat
Freedman Teaching Fellow, Temple Law School; and Legal Advocacy Coordinator, Badil
Freedman Teaching Fellow, Temple Law School; and Legal Advocacy Coordinator, Badil
Khaled Elgindy
Fellow, Saban
Center for Middle East Policy
Brookings Institute
Brookings Institute
Leila
Hilal
Director
The New American Foundation Middle East Task Force
Director
The New American Foundation Middle East Task Force
BIOGRAPHIES
Hrair Balian is
Director of the Conflict Resolution Program of
The Carter Center, where he oversees the
program’s efforts to monitor conflicts around
the world and coordinates the Center’s
cross-program efforts in the Middle East. He is
also an adjunct professor at the Emory
University Law School, teaching an advanced
international negotiations seminar. Since 1991,
Mr. Balian has worked in the Balkans, Eastern
Europe, the independent states emerging from
the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and
Africa, serving in intergovernmental
organizations (the United Nations and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe) and non-governmental organizations
(International Crisis Group and
others).
Mark Perry is an
American author specializing in military,
intelligence, and foreign affairs analysis. His
articles have been featured in a number of
leading publications including Foreign
Policy, The Los Angeles
Times, The Washington Post,
The Nation, Newsday, The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, The Christian Science
Monitor, and The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland, Ohio). He is the former co-Director
of the Washington, DC, London, and Beirut-based
Conflicts Forum, which specializes in engaging
with Islamist movements in the Levant in
dialogue with the West. Perry also served as an
unofficial advisor to late PLO Chairman and
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from 1989
to 2004. He is the author of Partners In
Command (Random House, 2009) and Talking
To Terrorists (2011) and is currently
working on a study of the relationship between
General Douglas MacArthur and President
Franklin Roosevelt (Basic Books,
2013).
Helena Cobban is
a British-American writer and researcher on
international relations, with special interests
in the Middle East, the international system,
and transitional justice. In March 2010, she
founded a new book-publishing company, Just
World Publishing, LLC. By September 2012, its
principal imprint, Just World Books, had
published twelve titles on current
foreign-policy issues. Ms. Cobban has also
published widely in other print media on three
continents. From 1993 through 2006, she
contributed a regular column on diplomatic and
strategic affairs to Al-Hayat (London).
She has served as a Visiting Senior Fellow at
Harvard University, Georgetown University, the
Brookings Institution, and elsewhere. She
currently sits on the Middle East Advisory
Committee of Human Rights Watch.
Nathan Brown is
professor of political science and
international affairs at George Washington
University and nonresident senior associate at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He has served as a Carnegie Scholar and a
fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and is the
author of six books, including When Victory
Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab
Politics (Cornell University Press, January
2012) and Palestinian Politics After the
Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine
(University of California Press,
2003).
Adel Iskandar is
a media and communication scholar who teaches
in the Communication, Culture and Technology
(CCT) program and the Center for Contemporary
Arab Studies (CCAS) at Georgetown University in
Washington, DC. He is the author and coauthor
of several works including Al-Jazeera: The
Story of the Network that is Rattling
Governments and Redefining Modern
Journalism (Basic Books) and Edward
Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and
Representation (University of California
Press). His forthcoming books include
Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween,
2012) and Egypt In Flux: Essay on an
Unfinished Revolution (American University
of Cairo Press,
2013).
Kristin Diwan is
an Assistant Professor in Comparative and
Regional Studies at the American University
School of International Service. She works in
both comparative politics and international
relations, specializing in Arab and Islamist
politics. Professor Diwan has many publications
on the politics and political economy of the
Arab Gulf, among them “Sovereign Dilemmas:
Sovereign Wealth Funds in Saudi Arabia,”
Geopolitics, 14/2 (April 2009);
“Bahrain’s Shia Question,” Foreign
Affairs (March 2011); and “Kuwait’s
Impatient Youth Movement,” Foreign
Policy (July 2011). She is currently
completing a book manuscript on the emergence
of Islamic banking in the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) states entitled From
Petrodollars to Islamic Dollars: Islamic
Finance in the Arab
Gulf.
Samer Badawi
is a communications manager with the
Institute for Middle East Understanding, an
independent non-profit that works to provide
resources and accurate information about
Palestine and the Palestinians to journalists.
Previously, he served as Director of Resource
Development and Communications with the
Geneva-based Welfare Association, as Executive
Director of United Palestinian Appeal in
Washington, DC, and as DC correspondent for
Middle East International. In addition to his
work on Middle East issues, Badawi has served
as a communications consultant to the World
Bank, the IFC, and the U.S. Agency for
International Development.
Will Youmans
is an Assistant
Professor at George Washington University’s
School of Media and Public Affairs. Broadly
interested in questions of transnationalism and
news media in conflict, his primary research
interests include global news, journalism,
media law, and social movements. He is
currently researching the development of Arab
media law as well as the role of transnational
media in US-Arab relations. Youmans has
presented at numerous conferences, including
the annual gatherings of the Middle East
Studies Association, the International
Communication Association, the National
Communication Association, the International
Studies Association, and the American
Sociological Association.
Yousef Munayyer - Executive Director, The
Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine
Center
Yousef Munayyer
is Executive Director of The
Jerusalem Fund and its educational program, The
Palestine Center. He frequently writes on
matters of foreign policy in the Arab and
Muslim world, and civil rights and civil
liberties issues in the United States. His
Op-Eds have appeared regularly in The
Washington Post, The Chicago
Tribune, The Boston Globe, The
San Francisco Chronicle, The
Detroit Free Press, and AlQuds
Newspaper, among others. He has also
appeared on national and international media
outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Al-Jazeera
English, C-Span, and others.
Noura Erakat is a
human rights attorney and activist. She is
currently the Freedman Teaching Fellow at the
Temple Law School, and is the US-based Legal
Advocacy Coordinator for Badil Center for
Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. Most
recently she served as Legal Counsel for a
Congressional Subcommittee in the House of
Representatives, chaired by Congressman Dennis
J. Kucinich. Her publications include
“Litigating the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The
Politicization anthology," and “BDS in the USA:
2001-2010,” in the Middle East Report.
She is a Co-Editor of
Jadaliyya.com.
Khaled Elgindy is
a Fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East
Policy at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, DC. He previously served as an
advisor to the Palestinian leadership in
Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with
Israel from 2004-2009, and was a key
participant in the Annapolis negotiations of
2008. He is the author of numerous publications
on Arab-Israeli affairs, Palestinian politics,
Egypt’s transition, and related subjects,
including: “The Middle East Quartet: A
Post-Mortem” (Brookings Institution, Feb.
2012); “Palestine Goes to the UN: Understanding
the New Statehood Strategy,” Foreign Affairs
(Sep./Oct. 2011); as well as “The Impact on
the Peace Process: Peacemaker or Peacebreaker?”
(with Salman Shaikh) and “The Palestinians:
Between National Liberation and Political
Legitimacy,” both in the recent Brookings
volume, The Arab Awakening: America and the
Transformation of the Middle East (Nov.
2011).
Leila Hilal, is
Director of the New America Foundation Middle
East Task Force, which covers in-depth analysis
and commentary on the Middle East and North
Africa. From 2002 to 2007, she served as a
legal adviser to the Palestinian Negotiations
Department. She also advised the Palestinian
Constitutional Committee during the drafting of
the Basic Law. She has also consulted widely
and published on conflict mediation policies in
the Middle East, including for the Chatham
House, International Development Research
Center, International Center for Transitional
Justice, Institute for Historical Justice and
Reconciliation, and the Euro-Med Human Rights
Network.
Click here to read about previous Annual Conferences
Click here to read about previous Annual Conferences