Speaker biographies

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. He has taught at Georgetown University and has contributed numerous articles on Russian affairs to newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. Mr. Aron also writes Russian Outlook, AEI’s quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition. He is a frequent guest of television and radio talk shows and has been interviewed on 60 minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, among others. Mr. Aron is the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989–2006 (AEI Press, 2007). He is at work on a book about ideas and ideals that inspired and shaped the latest Russian revolution (1987–91), to be published by Yale University Press.

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in November 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. He has served on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission since 2005, serving as vice chairman in 2007, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Board for the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Previously, Mr. Blumenthal was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the first George W. Bush administration. In addition to writing for AEI’s Asian Outlook series, he has written articles and op-eds for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, National Review, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently working on a manuscript that will examine divides within the China policymaking community.

Alex Brill is a research fellow at AEI. Prior to joining AEI in 2007, he served for five years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he was chief economist and senior adviser to the chairman. In this capacity, he led the staff in work on major tax, pension, trade, and health legislation and oversaw efforts to expand the analytical capability of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s revenue-estimating process. In addition to providing legislative and policy counsel to the chairman, Mr. Brill advised committee members about the effects of various tax, trade, health, and Social Security proposals and general economic trends. Prior to his work for the committee, he served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Brill began his career in Washington as a research assistant at AEI. He has written on a variety of tax policy issues.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow in defense and security policy studies at AEI. He is the author, with Frederick W. Kagan, of Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, May 2008); the coeditor, with Gary J. Schmitt, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007); and the author of The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005), Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004), and several other books. From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Donnelly also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.

Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia Business School. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and was the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain during the 2000 presidential primaries and the 2008 presidential campaign. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (AEI Press, 2005). He has published scholarly articles in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. Mr. Hassett’s popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today Show, CBS’s Morning Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.

Lawrence B Lindsey is the president and CEO of The Lindsey Group and a visiting scholar at AEI. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Prior to forming The Lindsey Group, he served as the assistant to the president and the director of the National Economic Council at the White House and was the chief economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign during the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Lindsey has also served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as a special assistant to the president for domestic economic policy during the George H.W. Bush administration, and as a senior staff economist for tax policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan’s first term. Mr. Lindsey served five years on the economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at AEI. From 1997 until 2001 he was the managing director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Growth Experiment (Basic Books, 1991), Economic Puppet Masters (AEI Press, 1998), and What a President Should Know . . . but Most Learn Too Late (AEI Press, 2008) .

Thomas P. Miller is a resident fellow at AEI, where he focuses on health policy, with particular emphasis on information transparency, health insurance regulation, and consumer-driven health care. He is also a member of the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Before joining AEI, Mr. Miller served for three years as a senior health economist for the Joint Economic Committee, where he organized a series of hearings focusing on promising reforms in private health care markets and drafted several Social Security reform bills. He also has been director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and director of economic policy studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mr. Miller’s writing has appeared in such publications as Health Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, National Review, the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, Regulation, and Cato Journal. Before coming to Washington, he was as a trial attorney, a journalist, and a sports radio broadcaster.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. Before coming to AEI, Ms. Pletka served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Since joining AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She was a member of the congressionally mandated U.S. Institute of Peace Task Force on the United Nations, which released its final report in 2005. She recently coedited Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats (AEI Press, 2008) and coauthored the 2008 AEI report Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Vincent R. Reinhart, a resident scholar at AEI, is a former director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs who has spent more than two decades working on domestic and international aspects of U.S. monetary policy. He held a number of senior positions in the Divisions of Monetary Affairs and International Finance and spent the last six years of his Federal Reserve career as secretary and economist of the Federal Open Market Committee. Mr. Reinhart has worked on topics as varied as economic bubbles and the conduct of monetary policy, auctions of U.S. Treasury securities, alternative strategies for monetary policy, and the efficient communication of monetary policy decisions. Since joining AEI, Mr. Reinhart has published work on international capital flows and has commented in the press on issues including the Federal Reserve, the mortgage system, and the financial crisis.

Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar at AEI, where he is director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a Washington-based foreign and defense policy think tank. Previously, Mr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the post of executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House. Mr. Schmitt is the coeditor, with Thomas Donnelly, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007). Mr. Schmitt has written books and articles on a number of topics, including the founding of America, the U.S. presidency, intelligence, and national security affairs.

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