Speaker Biographies

January 6, 2005

Thomas Carothers is senior associated director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Carothers is a leading authority on democracy promotion and democratization worldwide, as well as an expert on U.S. foreign policy. In addition, he has broad experience in matters dealing with human rights, international law, foreign aid, rule of law, civil society development, Latin America policy, and East European politics. Mr. Carothers is the author of three critically acclaimed books on democracy promotion as well as many article in prominent journals and newspapers. His most recent publications include Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (2005); Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (2004); and Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, edited with Marina S. Ottaway (2000). Prior to joining the Endowment, Mr. Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney–adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.

Jackson Diehl is the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post and an editorial writer and columnist specializing in foreign affairs. Mr. Diehl joined the Post in June 1978. He worked abroad as a foreign correspondent from January 1982 until July 1992 in three of the Post’s foreign bureaus. From 1982 to 1985 he was based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was responsible for coverage of South America; from 1985 until 1989 he was based in Warsaw and covered Eastern Europe; and from 1989 to 1992 he was the Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. In August 1992 Diehl returned to Washington. He supervised the Post's foreign coverage and staff as foreign editor and assistant managing editor/foreign from November1992 until March of 1999, when he was appointed assistant managing editor/national. He joined the editorial page following the 2000 election.

Michael Doran is an assistant professor in the department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He teaches courses on political Islam, Middle Eastern nationalisms, U.S.-Middle East relations, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Doran was an assistant professor of history at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of a study of the first Arab-Israeli war, entitled Pan-Arabism Before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question (Oxford University Press, 1999), and is currently working on a book entitled The Trump Card: Israel in the Arab Civil War. After he published an influential article on Osama bin Laden in the January/February 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, both government and business have frequently invited him to speak on Middle Eastern affairs.

Salameh Nematt is the Washington bureau chief of Al-Hayat, International Arab Daily (London) and the LBC, the Lebanon-based Arab satellite channel. He took his post in Washington in March 2003, after setting up a newsroom in London designed to serve the joint venture between Al-Hayat and LBC. Mr. Nematt served as the managing editor for the joint operation between July 2002 and June 2003. Previously, Mr. Nematt was the diplomatic correspondent in London for Al-Hayat, as well as the Amman bureau chief for Al-Hayat and freelance correspondent for the BBC Arabic Service. For a brief period in 1999, he was head of the Strategy Unit at Jordan’s Royal Court, an advisory post serving the king. Throughout his journalistic career, he has contributed to several Arabic, English, and other foreign publications including The Economist, Middle East Magazine, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Mideast Mirror, Die Zeit, Newsweek, and Oxford Analytica, as well as international broadcast media such as BBC World, ITV News, ABC News, PBS, CBC Radio, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, and Al-Hurra.

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