Francis Fukuyama is Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, and the director of SAIS' International Development program. He is also chairman of the editorial board of a new magazine, The American Interest.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning political and economic development. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. It made the bestseller lists in the United States, France, Japan, and Chile, and has been awarded the Los Angeles Times' Book Critics Award in the Current Interest category, as well as the Premio Capri for the Italian edition. He is also the author of Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995), The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (1999), Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002, and State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, (2004). His most recent book America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy was published by Yale University Press in March 2006.

Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952, in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.

Dr. Fukuyama was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2005. He holds an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College and Doane College, and is a member of advisory boards for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Journal of Democracy, and The New America Foundation, and FINCA. As an NED board member, he is responsible for oversight of the Endowment's Middle East programs. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

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).

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of political science, and sociology by courtesy, and coordinator of the Democracy Program at CDDRL. He is a specialist on democratic development and regime change and on U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad. His research examines comparative trends in the quality and stability of democracy in developing countries and post-communist states, and public opinion in new democracies. As a core member of the scientific team of the East Asia Barometer, he is investigating attitudes and values toward democracy in eight East Asian political systems. His research and policy analysis also address the relationship between democracy, governance and development in poor countries, particularly in Africa. In the past two years he has served as consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development and was a contributing author of its report, "Foreign Aid in the National Interest." He is also co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is now lecturing and writing about the challenges of post-conflict state-building in Iraq and other countries. He also recently served with a group of Europeans and Americans who produced a report on "Transatlantic Strategy for Democracy and Human Development in the Broader Middle East," published by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Diamond has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria. His recent edited books include Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (with Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg), Political Parties and Democracy (with Richard Gunther), The Global Resurgence of Democracy and The Global Divergence of Democracies (both with Marc F. Plattner), Consolidating Democracy in Korea (with Byung-Kook Kim), and Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea (with Doh Shin). Among his other 20 edited books are the series Democracy in Developing Countries (with Juan Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset); The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (with Andreas Schedler and Marc F. Plattner); and Democratization in Africa and Democracy in East Asia (both with Marc F. Plattner).

Diamond has lectured in more than 20 countries on problems of democratic development. He taught sociology at Vanderbilt University from 1980 to 1985 before joining Stanford and the Hoover Institution. He was a visiting scholar at the Academia Sinica (Taiwan, 1997-98) and a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Bayero University (Kano, Nigeria, 1982-83). He received all of his degrees from Stanford University, including a BA in 1974, an MA in 1978, and a PhD in sociology in 1980.

Jeremy Weinstein is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he directed the bi-partisan Commission on Weak States and US National Security. While working on his PhD, with funding from the Jacob Javits Fellowship, a Sheldon Fellowship, and the World Bank, he conducted hundreds of interviews with rebel combatants and civilians in both Africa and Latin America for his forthcoming book, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. He has also worked on the National Security Council staff; served as a visiting scholar at the World Bank; was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and received a research fellowship in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He received his BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and his MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

Branko Milanovic is lead economist in the World Bank research group and visiting professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he was a World Bank country economist for Poland and a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1987 from Belgrade University.

Milanovic is an expert in economies in transition, income distribution, and globalization.

Recent publications include: Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton, 2005); Income and Influence: Social Policy and Emerging Economies, with Ethan Kapstein (Russell Sage, 2002); Inequality and Poverty During the Transition From Market Economy (World Bank, 1998).