Panel Discussion: “Democratic Movements in Lebanon and Syria” - Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)

Michael C. Hudson is Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of International Relations and Seif Ghobash Professor of Arab Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He did his undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College and holds the M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. His research interests include political liberalization, politics in divided societies, Lebanese politics, U.S. Middle East policy, Gulf security, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the information revolution in the Arab world. He has held Guggenheim, Ford, and Fulbright fellowships and is a past president of The Middle East Studies Association. He has lectured in universities and research institutes around the world, including Australia, Britain, Egypt, France, Iran, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. He is regularly interviewed about Middle East issues in the news media, including the BBC, National Public Radio, Arabic satellite channels, and major newspapers.

Among Dr. Hudson's publications are The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon; The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (second ed., co-author); Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy, and The Palestinians: New Directions (editor and contributor). Recent articles include "The Transformation of Jerusalem, 1917-1987" in K.J. Asali (ed.), Jerusalem in History, 1988, 1997; "The Middle East Under Pax Americana: How New, How Orderly?" Third World Quarterly, 1992; "Bipolarity, Rationality, and War in Yemen," in J. al-Suwaydi, The Yemeni War of 1994 (London 1994); "Arab Regimes and Democratization: The Challenge of Political Islam," in L. Guazzone (ed.), The Islamist Dilemma (London/Rome, 1995); "International Interventions in Lebanon," in M. Esman and S. Telhami (eds.), International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict (Cornell, 1996); "Obstacles to Democratization in the Middle East" Contention, 1996; "To Play the Hegemon: 50 Years of U.S. Policy toward the Middle East," Middle East Journal, 1996; "Trying Again: Power-Sharing in Post-Civil War Lebanon," International Negotiation, 1997; “A Pan-Arab Virtual Think Tank,” Middle East Journal, 2000, and “Area Studies and the Discipline: The Middle East,” PS: Political Science and Politics, 2001. His latest book is an edited volume, Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), and his latest articles are “Imperial Headaches: Managing Unruly Regions in an Age of Globalization,” Middle East Policy IX:4 (December 2002) [an Arabic version appears in Al-Mustaqbil al-Arabi (Beirut, November 2002)], and “Information Technology, International Politics, and Political Change in the Arab World,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (Amman, Autumn/Winter 2002). His paper on “The Politics of Pax Americana in Iraq and the Middle East,” presented to a conference in Beirut in March 2004, was reprinted as a series in The Daily Star (Beirut), April 6, 7, and 8, 2004.

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Najib Ghadbian is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of, Democratization and the Islamists Challenge in the Arab World, which was published by Westview Press in 1997. A revised and updated Arabic edition was published in Amman and Beirut in 2002. Dr. Ghadbian has published several book chapters and articles on Syrian politics both in English and Arabic. He has contributed political commentaries to several US, European and Arabic media outlets. He has been a frequent political commentator for al-Jazeera Satellite TV Channel since January 2000. Ghadbian’s research interests include political currents & democratization in the Arab world, Syrian politics, Islamic movements, US-ME relations. Najib is a newly elected board member of CSID.

Adib F. Farha, a Middle East analyst, was the advisor to the Lebanese Minister of Finance for four years, during which time he served as a part-time professor (last three years) at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Between 2002 - 2004, he was a member of Lebanon’s National Audio-Visual Media Council (the Lebanese equivalent of the FCC).

He has lectured at major US academic institutions and think tanks such as Harvard University, M.I.T., Boston University, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center as well as at major international conferences. He is also a commentator and an economic and political analyst, with frequent contributions to Lebanon's only English-language newspaper, The Daily Star; various Arabic-language newspapers such as An Nahar, As Safir, Al Mustaqbal, Aliwaa and others; and to The International Herald Tribune. His articles are often carried by global news agencies. Adib Farha is a very frequent guest on Lebanese, Arab and international radio and TV channels, including CNN America, CNN International, MSNBC, BBC World, Al Arabia TV, Al Jazeera, ANB, VOA, and Al Hurra. He has also hosted his own TV talk show on Lebanese NBN TV during the most recent US presidential elections.

Joseph Montville founded the preventive diplomacy program at CSIS in 1994 and directed it until 2003. Before that he spent 23 years as a diplomat with posts in the Middle East and North Africa. He also worked in the State Department's Bureaus of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Intelligence and Research, where he was chief of the Near East Division and director of the Office of Global Issues. Montville has held faculty appointments at Harvard and the University of Virginia Medical Schools for his work in political psychology. He defined the concept of Track II, nonofficial diplomacy. Educated at Lehigh, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, Montville is the editor of Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington Books, 1990) and editor (with Vamik Volkan and Demetrios Julius) of The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington Books, 1990 [vol. I], 1991 [vol. II]).