Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of specialization are Iran, the Persian Gulf, and U.S. foreign policy. He is also a contributing editor of the National Interest.

Dr. Takeyh was previously professor of national security studies at the National War College; professor and director of studies at the Near East and South Asia Center, National Defense University; fellow in international security studies at Yale University; fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Takeyh is currently working on a book entitled The Guardians of the Revolution: Iran’s Approach to the World (under contract by Oxford University Press). He is the author of a number of previous books including Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic (Times Books, 2006) and The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The U.S., Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953–1957 (MacMillan Press, 2000). Dr. Takeyh has published widely, including articles in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, Survival, World Policy Journal, Washington Quarterly, Orbis, Middle East Journal, Political Science Quarterly, and Middle East Policy. His commentary has also been featured in many newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune.

Dr. Takeyh has testified frequently at various congressional committees and has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC, FOX, and C-SPAN.

Dr. Takeyh earned a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University.

"Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Election of 2008," Jonathan Alter, Senior Editor, Newsweek.

Since 1991, Jonathan Alter has written a widely-acclaimed Newsweek column that examines politics, media and social and global issues. Alter is also an originator and author of the weekly “Conventional Wisdom Watch,�? which uses up, down and sideways arrows to measure and lampoon the news. As an editor, he helps shape the magazine’s overall news coverage.

Alter has covered the last six presidential campaigns for Newsweek. He frequently interviews American presidents and other world leaders, regularly breaks news and has authored more than 50 Newsweek cover stories. Over the years, he has written extensively about party politics, patriotism, anti-Semitism, weapons of mass destruction, at-risk children, and a wide variety of other issues.

His new book, “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,�? will be published by Simon and Schuster in May, 2006.

Since 1996, Alter has also been a contributing correspondent for NBC News, where he appears regularly on all NBC broadcasts including “TODAY,�? “NBC Nightly News,�? NBC News specials, MSNBC and CNBC. In spring 1997, Alter was the Ferris Visiting Professor of Press and Politics at Princeton University.

Alter has earned many awards for his political columns, including a prize from the National Headliner Awards for Special Column on One Subject for a series of columns on life after 9/11. He was also part of the teams of Newsweek reporters and editors awarded the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1993, 2002, 2004. He received the John Bartlow Martin Award in 2001 for his reporting on the death penalty. Alter also received the 1994 Clarion Award from Women in Communications for Best Magazine Opinion Column, and the 1993 National Headliner Award for Consistently Outstanding Feature Column.

His many awards for media criticism include the 1987 Lowell Mellett Award and two New York State Bar Association Media Awards. In 1995, Alter was selected as one of the nation’s most influential media critics in a survey of leading media executives and scholars published by the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He also won the 1987 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting, and a Mentoring USA Award for encouraging mentoring.

Alter joined Newsweek as an associate editor in the Nation section in March 1983, and became media critic the following year. He was named a senior writer in February 1987 and a senior editor in September 1991. For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also been a freelance writer for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, and The New York Times.

A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. He is married to Emily Lazar. They live in New Jersey with their children.

"The Great Arm-Twister: LBJ and Domestic Policy," James T. Patterson '57, Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University.

James T. Patterson is the Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University, where he has taught for 30 years. His research interests include political, legal and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations and education.

While teaching at Indiana University from 1964 to 1972, he published "Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal," "The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition," and "Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft." He received the Frederick Jackson Turner Book Prize from the Organization of American Historians in 1966 and the Indiana University Teaching Award in 1968, as well as two National Endowment for Humanities Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1972, Patterson joined the faculty of Brown University. His publications during that period include "America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1980;" "The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture;" "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974," which won the Bancroft Prize for American History in 1997; "Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy;" and "Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore." Several of his books have been History Book Club selections.

He was elected a member of the Society of American Historians in 1974 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.

The September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq have raised a number of questions about U.S. intelligence.
• Why did the intelligence community fail to prevent 9/11?
• How do policymakers use intelligence to make decisions about war and peace?
• Should Americans be willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in the name of national security?

Richard Betts explores these questions and others in his critically-acclaimed recent book, "Enemies of Intelligence."

Betts is the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Betts has taught at Harvard University and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990. A former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the National Security Council, and the Walter Mondale presidential campaign, Betts has been a consultant to the National Intelligence Council and Central Intelligence Agency.

On Saturday, April 12, the Leadership Studies Program at Williams College will bring together leading intelligence scholars to discuss Betts's work and offer insights about the future of U.S. intelligence. The conference will feature a range of academic experts along with representatives from the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The public is invited and the event is free.

Saturday, April 12 – Griffin Hall, room 3

9:00-10:30 - Intelligence and Foreign Policy Chair: Joshua Rovner, Williams College; James Wirtz, Naval Postgraduate School; Paul Pillar, Georgetown University; Thomas Mahnken, Department of Defense; Glenn Hastedt, James Madison University

10:45-12:15 - Surprise Attack and Intelligence Reform Chair: Richard Gid Powers, College of Staten Island; Richard Russell, National Defense University; Arthur Hulnick, Boston University; Stephen Marrin, Mercyhurst College; Erik Dahl, Harvard University

2:15-3:45 –Secrecy and Democracy Chair: Stephanie Kaplan, MIT; James Bruce, RAND; David Kaiser, Naval War College; Ted Gup, Case Western Reserve University

Participants bios in alphabetical order

Richard K. Betts is the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Betts has taught at Harvard University and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990. A former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the National Security Council, and the Walter Mondale presidential campaign, Betts has been a consultant to the National Intelligence Council and Central Intelligence Agency.

He is the author of Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises (Harvard, 1977), The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked with Leslie Gelb (Brookings, 1979), Nonproliferation and U.S. Foreign Policy (Brookings, 1980), Cruise Missiles: Technology Strategy, Politics (Brookings, 1981), and Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Brookings, 1987), and Military Readiness (Brookings, 1995). He is also the editor of Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, 2nd ed. (Longman, 2001). His writings have earned five prizes, including the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in political science.

James B. Bruce is a retired career CIA intelligence analyst who has served with the National Intelligence Council, within the Directorates of Intelligence and Operations, and has worked extensively with other intelligence community organizations. Bruce is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He is the co-editor, with Roger Z. George, of Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations (Georgetown, 2008).

Erik J. Dahl retired from the U.S. Navy in 2002 after serving 21 years as an intelligence officer. He is a pre-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. candidate at The Fletcher School of Tufts University. His dissertation research examines the causes of intelligence failure and success in preventing surprise attacks from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. In September 2008 he will join the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, as an assistant professor of national security affairs.

Ted Gup, the legendary investigative reporter, is the author of Nation of Secrets: the Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life (Doubleday, 2000) and The Book of Honor: Covert Lives & Classified Deaths at the CIA (Doubleday, 2000). He is the Shirley Wormster Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University. His Nation of Secrets received the prestigious Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Glenn P. Hastedt is professor of political science at James Madison University where he teaches courses on American foreign policy and international relations. He has edited two books on intelligence, Controlling Intelligence (Frank Cass, 1991) and Analysis and Estimates (Frank Cass, 1996). He is the also the author of American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future (Prentice-Hall, 1997), and World Politics in a Changing World (Allyn & Bacon, forthcoming).

Arthur S. Hulnick is associate professor of international relations at Boston University. A veteran of more than 35 years in the profession of intelligence, including seven years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and 28 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, Hulnick was one of the early pioneers in developing courses at the university level on strategic intelligence, and he has written extensively on the subject. His recent publications include Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security (Praeger, 2004) and Fixing the Spy Machine: Preparing American Intelligence for the 21st Century (Praeger, 1999).

David E. Kaiser is professor in the strategy and policy department of the Naval War College. His books include Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War (Princeton, 1980); Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler (Harvard, 1990); American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Harvard, 2002); and The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Harvard, 2008).

Stephanie Kaplan served as special assistant to the executive and deputy director of the 9/11 Commission, where she was also managing editor of the Commission's final report. She is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an affiliate of the MIT Security Studies Program. She is also a pre-doctoral fellow with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism and a consultant to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

Thomas G. Mahnken is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. He has served on the faculty at the Naval War College as well as the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His publications include Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel, edited with Richard K. Betts (Frank Cass, 2003), and The Information Revolution in Military Affairs: Prospects for Asia, edited with Emily O. Goldman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Stephen Marrin is assistant professor in the intelligence studies department at Mercyhurst College and a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia. A former analyst in the CIA and the Government Accountability Office, he has written on various aspects of intelligence studies, including one that led to the creation of CIA University. In 2004, the National Journal described him as one of the country's top 10 experts on intelligence reform.

Paul R. Pillar is visiting professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. He also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He has been executive assistant to CIA's deputy director for Intelligence and executive assistant to director of Central Intelligence William Webster.

Richard Gid Powers is professor of history at the College of Staten Island. A specialist on national security and the FBI, he is the author of G-Men: Hoover's FBI in American Popular Culture (1983); Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1987); Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (1996); and Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (2004). He also worked with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Secrecy: The American Experience (1998), and contributed the introduction.

Joshua Rovner is the Stanley Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow in Leadership Studies and Political Science at Williams College, where he teaches courses on international security and American foreign policy. His doctoral dissertation, "Intelligence-Policy Relations and the Problem of Politicization" (MIT, 2008), explores the use of intelligence in national security policymaking. He has published in International Security, The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Strategic Insights, and The Boston Globe.

Richard L. Russell is professor of National Security Affairs at the National Defense University's Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. He also served 17 years as a political-military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of Sharpening Strategic Intelligence: Why the CIA Gets It Wrong and What Needs to be Done to Get It Right (Cambridge University Press, 2007); Weapons Proliferation and War in the Greater Middle East: Strategic Contest (Routledge, 2005); and George F. Kennan's Strategic Thought: The Making of an American Political Realist (Praeger, 1999).

James J. Wirtz is acting dean of the School of International Graduate Studies and professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is editor of the Palgrave Macmillan series, Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies and section chair of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association. He is a past president of the International Security and Arms Control Section of the American Political Science Association. Wirtz is the author of The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Cornell, 1991). He has also co-edited several volumes on intelligence.

The conference is sponsored by both the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and the Leadership Studies Program at Williams.

Saturday, March 8 – Griffin Hall, Room 3 9-10:30 AM: Roundtable #1--"Japanese Strategy in the Pacific" Chair: Waldo Heinrichs, Temple University Panelists: James Wood, Williams College; Richard Frank, Independent Scholar; Edward Drea, U.S. Army Center for Military History, retired; Mark Parillo, Kansas State University

10:45-12:15 PM: Roundtable # 2—"Allied Airpower Strategies" Chair: Malcolm Muir, Virginia Military Institute Panelists: Conrad Crane, US Army Military History Institute; Tami Davis Biddle, Army War College; Reina Pennington, Norwich University

1:45-3:15 PM: Roundtable #3—"Allied Strategic and Diplomatic Relations" Chair: Arnold Offner, Lafayette College Panelists: Frank Costigliola, University of Connecticut; Randall Woods, University of Arkansas; Theodore Wilson, University of Kansas; J. Garry Clifford, University of Connecticut

3:30-5:00 PM: Roundtable #4—"What Remains to be Done?" Chair: Mark Stoler, Williams College Panelists: Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina; Allan Millett, University of New Orleans; Raymond Callahan, University of Delaware

Additional Conference Participants: Andrew Buchanan, University of Vermont; Marc Gallicchio, Villanova University; Gian Gentile, US Military Academy; Meredith Hindley, American University; Timothy Jackson, Naval War College; Paul Miles, Princeton University; Galen Perras, University of Ottowa; Kurt Piehler, University of Tennessee; Michael Pavelec, Naval War College; Steven Ross, Naval War College; Nick Sarantakes, Naval War College; Douglas Smith, Naval War College; Roger Spiller, US Military Academy; Robert VanMeter, Skidmore College; Steven Waddell, US Military Academy; David Woolner, Marist College and FDR Library

This conference is sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and the Program in Leadership Studies.

Rick Atkinson the best-selling author of The Long Gray Line, a narrative account about West Point’s class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War; and An Army at Dawn, the first volume in the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history of the American Army in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe during the Second World War. His book about the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, In the Company of Soldiers, was published in March 2004. The second volume of the Liberation Trilogy, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, was published in Oct. 2007. The New York Times called it “a triumph of narrative history, elegantly written…and rooted in the sight and sounds of battle."

Atkinson’s awards include the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to The Post for a series of investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by the District of Columbia police department; the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history; and the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting. Atkinson is on extended book leave from The Washington Post, where his most recent assignments were covering the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and writing about roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007.

Dr Yoav Alon is a senior lecturer in modern history of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University. He wrote his doctoral thesis in Oxford University on the creation of the modern Jordanian state under the British mandate and the integration of the tribal population into the modern structures of the new state. He teaches, researches, lectures and publishes on topics such as Jordanian history and politics, the British Empire in the Middle East, the Palestine mandate and tribal societies in the modern Middle East. His book The Making of Jordan: Tribes, Colonialism and the Modern State has been published in London by IB Tauris earlier this year.

John Burns is currently London Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He is the longest-serving foreign correspondent in The New York Times' history, having worked for more than 30 years on assignment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Among his many awards, Burns has won two Pulitzer prizes: in 1993 for his coverage of the siege and destruction of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, and again in 1997 for his coverage of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.This event is free but tickets are required. Contact the '62 Center box office to reserve tickets: 413-597-2425. Box office hours are Tues.-Fri. 1-5 p.m. Sponsored by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy and the Leadership Studies Program.

For decades, the Commonwealth of Virginia led the nation. The premier state in population, size, and wealth, it produced a galaxy of leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Mason, Marshall. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians. And yet by the middle of the nineteenth century, Virginia had become a byword for slavery, provincialism, and poverty. What happened? In her remarkable book, Dominion of Memories, historian Susan Dunn reveals the little known story of the decline of the Old Dominion. While the North rapidly industrialized and democratized, Virginia's leaders turned their backs on the accelerating modern world. Spellbound by the myth of aristocratic, gracious plantation life, they waged an impossible battle against progress and time itself. In their last years, two of Virginia's greatest sons, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, grappled vigorously with the Old Dominion's plight. But bound to the traditions of their native soil, they found themselves grievously torn by the competing claims of state and nation, slavery and equality, the agrarian vision and the promises of economic development and prosperity. This fresh and penetrating examination of Virginia's struggle to defend its sovereignty, traditions, and unique identity encapsulates, in the history of a single state, the struggle of an entire nation drifting inexorably toward Civil War. - The Perseus Book Group

Mark A. Stoler is Professor of History at the University of Vermont. He earned his B.A. at the City College of New York and his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941-1943 (1977), George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (1989) and Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (2000), which won the 2002 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History. He is co-author of Explorations in American History: A Skills Approach (1987), Major Problems in the History of World War II (2002), and Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933-1945 (2005). His most recent monograph is Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers, 1940-1945.

Since 1970, Stoler has taught at the University of Vermont, where he has been honored for his scholarship with the University Scholar Award (1993), as well as his teaching, with the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award (1984), the Dean's Lecture Award (1992), and the Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award (2006). In addition, he held the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair at the U.S. Military History Institute in Carlisle, PA in 2004-5. He has also served as a visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval War College, and at the University of Haifa in Israel under the Fulbright Program. Stoler has served on the SHAFR Council (2000-2002), the nominating committee (1991-1994), the annual conference planning committee (1989-1990), the Bernath Book Prize committee (1988-1991), and the membership committee (1974-1984). Other service includes a term on the Board of Editors for Diplomatic History (1986-1989) as well as the Army's Historical Advisory Committee (1996-2000). Stoler currently serves on the Board of Directors for the World War II Studies Association and the Board of Trustees of the Society for Military History.

You can e-mail him at: Mark.Stoler@uvm.edu