Middle East in focus: U.S. strategy in a changing region
A policy conversation on conflict, diplomacy, and the path ahead
Speaker
Aaron David Miller, Rosemary Kelanic, Javed AliDate & time
How to attend
Aaron David Miller and Rosemary Kelanic will join the Ford School's Javed Ali for a conversation examining the choices facing the United States in a rapidly changing Middle East.
Drawing on decades of experience, Miller and Kelanic will examine the forces shaping the region and assess the opportunities and constraints confronting U.S. foreign policy. Moderated by Ali, the conversation will consider the region's evolving conflicts and alliances, the prospects for diplomacy, and the role the United States can play amid continued instability and geopolitical change.
About the speakers:
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy. He has written five books, including The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President and The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, and hosts Carnegie Connects, Carnegie's premier live podcast. He received his PhD in Middle East and U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977.
Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations. From 2006 to 2019, Miller was a public policy scholar, vice president for new initiatives, and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Miller's articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. He is a frequent commentator on CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, BBC, and Sirius XM radio.
Rosemary Kelanic is director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, where she writes on energy security and U.S. grand strategy in the region. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and she has been quoted or interviewed by CNN, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. She is the author of Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics and co-editor, with Charles L. Glaser, of Crude Strategy: Rethinking the U.S. Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil. Before entering the policy world, she spent 10 years teaching political science at the University of Notre Dame and Williams College. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and a BA from Bryn Mawr College.
Speaker bios courtesy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Defense Priorities.
About the moderator:
Javed Ali is an associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He brings more than 20 years of experience in national security and intelligence, including senior roles at the National Security Council, National Counterterrorism Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, and Defense Intelligence Agency. His teaching and research focus on national security, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and international policy.
This event is part of the Ford School's Conversations Across Differences series, which supports reasoned, evidence-based discussion of consequential policy issues across ideological, partisan, and identity differences.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged but not required. A livestream will be available on this page.
