Lyman and Morrison will discuss the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force Report on the US and Africa. The Report argues that Africa is becoming steadily more central to the United States and to the rest of the world in ways that transcend humanitarian interests. Africa now plays an increasingly significant role in supplying energy, preventing the spread of terrorism, and halting the devastation of HIV/AIDS. Africa's growing importance is reflected in the intensifying competition with China and other countries for both access to African resources and influence in this region. A more comprehensive U.S. policy toward Africa is needed, the report states, and it lays out recommendations for policymakers to craft that policy. The report is available at www.cfr.org.

Princeton N. Lyman is the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow and Director for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Ambassador Lyman served for over three decades at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), completing his government service as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. He was previously Ambassador to South Africa, Ambassador to Nigeria, Director of Refugee Programs and Director of the USAID Mission to Ethiopia.

From 1999 to 2000, he was Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Ambassador Lyman held the position of Executive Director of the Global Interdependence Initiative of the Aspen Institute (1999 to 2003) and has received the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Ambassador Lyman has published on foreign policy, African affairs, economic development, HIV/AIDS, UN reform, and peacekeeping. He coauthored the Council on Foreign Relations Special Report entitled Giving Meaning to "Never Again": Seeking an Effective Response to the Crisis in Darfur and Beyond. His book, Partner to History: The U.S. Role in South Africa's Transition to Democracy, was published in 2002. He earned his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

J. Stephen Morrison is Director of the Africa Program and the Task Force on HIV/AIDS at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joined CSIS in January 2000 and in late 2001, launched the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS. The task force is a multiyear project co-chaired by Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and John Kerry (D-MA) and funded by the Gates Foundation and the Catherine Marron Foundation. Dr. Morrison co-chaired the reassessment of the U.S. approach to Sudan that laid the basis for the Bush administration push for a negotiated peace settlement, and in the summer of 2002 he organized an energy expert mission to the Sudan peace negotiations in Kenya.

From 1996 through early 2000, Dr. Morrison served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. In that position, he led the State Department's initiative on illicit diamonds and chaired an interagency review of the U.S. government's crisis humanitarian programs. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Morrison conceptualized and launched USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives; he served as the office's first Deputy Director and created post-conflict programs in Angola and Bosnia. From 1992 until mid-1993, Dr. Morrison was the Democracy and Governance Adviser to the U.S. embassies and USAID missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea. He serves as the Co-Director of the Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force on Africa.

A former career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Barbara Bodine served as US Ambassador to Yemen from 1997-2001. Ambassador Bodine spent her 30-year diplomatic career primarily in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, including tours as Deputy Principal Officer in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War and Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and occupation in 1990. In 2003 Ambassador Bodine served as coordinator for post-conflict reconstruction for Baghdad and the central governorates of Iraq.

In addition to a number of assignments in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Ms. Bodine was the Associate Coordinator for Operations and subsequently acting overall Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State, Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute and Director of East African Affairs.

Ambassador Bodine is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Secretary's Award for Valor, the Secretary's Career Achievement Award and the Department's Distinguished Service Award.

Minxin Pei is a senior associate and director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1991 and taught politics at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998. His main interest is U.S.-China relations, the development of democratic political systems, and Chinese politics. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

His research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. His op-eds have appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and other major newspapers.

David Backer is a CDDRL post-doctoral fellow in the academic year 2005-2006. He is also an Assistant Professor of Politics at the College of William and Mary. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan. His dissertation project was an evaluation of the impact of participation by victims in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He is extending this research by comparing attitudes of victims and the general public, as well as conducting a longitudinal study of victims' attitudes about reparations. In addition, Backer is undertaking a parallel study of victims' responses to the truth commission processes in Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. His talk at the CDDRL seminar will focus on the South African experience with transitional justice.

The talk will be based on his new book Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics.

Professor Fish received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1993. His research and teaching interests include post-Soviet politics, democratization and regime change, and general comparative politics. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on these topics. He is the author of Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1995) and a coauthor of Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001). He has also published articles in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Current History, Diplomatic History, East European Constitutional Review, East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, The Journal of Communist Studies, Journal of Democracy, Peace and Change, Post-Soviet Affairs, Slavic Review, World Politics and numerous edited volumes.