Rami Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. He is an internationally syndicated journalist, author, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is currently a visiting fellow with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Mr. Khouri will speak about the war in Lebanon this summer. He will provide an analysis of the Israeli-Hezbollah war and discuss its fallout for Lebanese society and government, and its impact on the region's power dynamics. He will also comment on escalating violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and heightening tensions between the U.S. and political movements in the region, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Pamela Constable is the deputy foreign editor of The Washington Post. Previously she covered South Asia for The Washington Post for several years from April 1999, with extensive coverage of Afghanistan as well as both India and Pakistan.n She continues to visit and report from Afghanistan.

Before arriving in New Delhi in 1999, Constable worked for The Post from 1994 to 1998 covering immigration and Hispanic affairs in the Washington area, and reported from Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti and Cuba.

Prior to joining The Post, Constable worked for The Boston Globe as deputy Washington bureau chief and foreign policy reporter from June to September 1994. From 1983 until 1992, she was The Globe's roving foreign correspondent, Latin America correspondent and diplomatic correspondent. During this time she reported from Haiti, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and Brazil, as well as in Washington.

Her latest book is Fragments of Grace: My Search For Meaning in the Strife of South Asia. She is the co-author with Arturo Valenzuela of A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet and has written articles for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Current History and other publications. She was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in 1990 and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for coverage of Latin America in 1993. Constable is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received a B.A. from Brown University.

Evgeny Kiselev, b.1956, educated in Moscow University, Institute of Asian and African Countries, majored in Middle Eastern Studies, history of modern Iran and Farsi language. He started his career by serving in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in 1979-1981 as Farsi interpreter. He took to television journalism in 1987 and quickly rose to prominence as television reporter and news anchor during the years of Gorbachev's reforms. In 1993 co-founded NTV, the first independent television company in the history of Russia. For many years NTV was setting up the highest standards of modern broadcasting journalism in Russia and was considered the most popular television channel among Russian newly emergent middle class, educated people, liberal intellectuals, supporters of democratic reforms etc. During the 90s and the early 2000s NTV was famous for its bold and outspoken style of reporting on the major issues, including such touchy ones as the war on Chechnya, political intrigue in the Kremlin, high-level corruption in the government and many others. For more than a decade Evgeny Kiselev was hosting "Itogi" (Results) - a weekly show that combined in-depth reports, journalistic investigations, live interviews with leading politicians and newsmakers, opinion and commentary. It was famous for its outspoken criticism of government policy. "Itogi" was the longest-running political show on Russian television and was closed only due to the events that changed Evgeny Kiselev's career. In 2001, following the election of Vladimir Putin to Russia's presidency, the government started to crack down on independent media. NTV was put under the control of the government after a hostile takeover by Gazprom, Russia's gas monopoly, and Evegeny Kiselev, who by that time was general director of NTV, had to leave the company. He was involved in two other major projects aimed at preserving the independent voice of television in Russia, but both television stations were closed by the government. Evgeny Kiselev remains active as an independent columnist and political analyst, he has a popular weekly program on the "Echo of Moscow", the leading Russian radio station, he also lectures at home and abroad.

His new television project - "Vlast" ("Power"), a show that will concentrate again on Russian politics and power struggle that is already starting in Russia on the eve of the next presidential election in 2008, is scheduled to appear in December on RTVi, the last remaining independent Russian station.

David Patel is a PhD candidate in Stanford's Dept of Political Science and,

beginning in Fall 2007, an Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell

University. He is currently a pre-doctoral fellow with the Center on

Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Mr. Patel will speak about changes in the communal support base of the

Jordanian Islamic Movement. He asks, why did a flourising Islamist movement,

capable of transcending Jordan's communal boundaries and shifting the broad

axes of social division, instead transform into an ethnic party in the

1990s? He argues the Transjordanian-dominated government, threatened by

Islamists' cross-communal appeal, purposely exploits communal divisions

within the Islamic Movement by engineering electoral rules, gerrymandering

districts, and provoking communally-divisive crises with the Movement. These

changes lead the Islamic Movement to increasingly cater to

Palestinian-Jordanian voters, which preserves national origin as the most

salient cleavage in Jordanian society.