Amatzia Baram is a professor in the department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa, where his research focuses on the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the Ba'ath regimes of Iraq and Syria. From 1984-1988, he advised Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Middle Eastern affairs. He has continued to advise various branches of government in Israel on Iraq and the Gulf. Mr. Baram is a trustee of the International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism in Israel. He has held fellowships at Hebrew University's School for Advanced Studies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, St. Antony's College, Oxford, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Mr. Baram is the author of Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba'athist Iraq (1991) and Building Towards Crisis: Saddam Husayn's Strategy for Survival (1998), and coeditor of Iraq's Road to War (1993).
Ian Buruma is a journalist and writer for the New York Review of Books and the Guardian (UK). He is the author of many books and novels, including God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989), The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (1995), Bad Elements (2001), and Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 (forthcoming, 2003). Mr. Buruma was formerly a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident scholar at AEI. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, he focuses on regions such as Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the former Soviet Union, as well as issues such as terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (1997) and a chapter on Iran in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (2000), as well as a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and International Herald Tribune, among others. He is also currently working on a book titled For Their Eyes Only. Mr. Gerecht formerly held such positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century, and as a Middle Eastern specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Ibrahim A. Karawan is director of the Middle East Center and an associate professor of political science at the University of Utah. Between 1995-1997, he was senior fellow for Middle East Studies and directing staff member at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He is a member of the advisory board of the Center for International Studies at Oxford University and a fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is a former senior research associate at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Karawan is a frequent contributing analyst to the BBC World Service, CNN, Al-Jazeera satellite Television, and Abu Dhabi TV. His books include The Islamist Impasse (1997).
Hassan Mneimneh is codirector of the Iraq Research and Documentation Project at Harvard University. He is a regular contributor to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat. His publications include "Manual for a 'Raid'" (co-authored with Kanan Makiya in the New York Review of Books).
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. Before coming to AEI, she was a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1992 to 2002. Ms. Pletka also served as a staff writer for Insight Magazine, as well as an editorial assistant for the Los Angeles Times and Reuters in Jerusalem.
