Amin Tarzi is the inaugural Director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Previously Dr. Tarzi was with RFE/RL's Regional Analysis team focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. While working at RFE/RL, Dr. Tarzi also taught courses in political Islam, cultural intelligence, terrorist organizations and similar topics at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Prior to joining RFE/RL, Dr. Tarzi worked as Senior Research Associate for the Middle East at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies where his primary research emphasis was Iran and its missile and nuclear developments and policies. At the Monterey Institute, Dr. Tarzi also taught a graduate seminar on Middle East security policies and threat perceptions. His work experience includes the post of Political Advisor to the Saudi Arabian Mission at the United Nations where attended the informal "Friends of Afghanistan" group which included Iran, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and United States. The informal group later gave way to the formal Six-Plus-Two structure. He has also held the position of Researcher/Analyst on Iranian affairs at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi. For a year in 1992, after the fall of the communist regime in Kabul, Dr. Tarzi served as a diplomat at the Afghan Mission to the UN.

Tarzi earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Middle East Studies at New York University. Tarzi's dissertation, entitled The Judicial State: Evolution and Centralization of the Courts in Afghanistan, 1883-1896 is under consideration for publication by Harvard Law School's Islamic Legal Studies Program. Dr. Tarzi and Professor Robert D. Crews of Stanford University have co-edited a volume entitled Taliban and the Crisis in Afghanistan, to be released in February 2008 by Harvard University Press.

Professor Brown received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics, as well as more general courses on comparative politics and international relations. Brown is author of Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt (1990); The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf (1997); Constitutions in a Non-Constitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (2001); and Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (2003).

Professor Brown is the recipient of Fulbright grants to study in Egypt and the Gulf and teach in Israel. He recently served two years as Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Weitseng Chen, a Fulbright scholar, will receive his JSD from Yale Law School in October 2007. His recent research focuses on China's foreign direct investment and property rights transition, the economic behaviors of ethnic foreign investors in China, and a China-Taiwan comparison on their rule of law transition. Prior to his Yale education, Chen practiced law in Taiwan in diverse fields such as Internet and information technology industry, the private sector and public interest affairs, governmental reforms, and international NGO affairs.

Weitseng Chen's recent publications include "East Asian Model and Rule of Law (with Randall Peerenboom, a to be published book chapter)", "WTO: Time's Up for Chinese Banks - China's Banking Reform and Non-Performing Loans Disposal" (Chicago Journal of International Law), "State, Market, and the Law: Law and Development in Taiwan" (Chinese) (Journal of the Humanities & Social Science), and a book titled Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction between Taiwan's Economic Development and Economic & Trade Laws after WWII. (Chinese).