Monday, October 2, 2023 Hybrid Luncheon, Union Club of Boston and via Zoom
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
Fellow, Harvard’s Kenney School and Former director for European Affairs at the National Security Council
“Possible Outcomes of the War in Ukraine”
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was the director for European Affairs at the National Security Council from 2018 to 2020. He was born in Kyiv, then part of the Soviet Union, and immigrated to the US when he was four years old. Vindman joined the Army in 1999, and served in South Korea, Germany, and Iraq, where he was wounded by a roadside bomb in 2004. He also served as a military attaché in Kyiv and Moscow, and in the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before joining the NSC staff in July 2018. In November 2019, Vindman testified before Congress that President Trump had urged President Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden. Trump subsequently fired Vindman from the NSC in February 2020. In July 2020, Vindman retired from the Army. Since then, he has written a memoir, Here, Right Matters. Vindman is a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies, and this fall he is a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
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Friday, October 27, 2023 Hybrid Luncheon, Union Club of Boston and via Zoom
Naghmeh Sohrabi
Goodman Professor of Middle East History and Research Director, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University
“The Meaning Behind the Women, Life, Freedom Movement in Iran”
Naghmeh Sohrabi is Goodman Professor of Middle East History and research director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis. She was president of the Association of Iranian Studies from 2020 to 2022. Sohrabi has written numerous articles in Persian and English on Iran’s history, politics, and culture, and is the author of one book, Taken for Wonder: Nineteenth Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe.
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Thursday, November 9, 2023 Joint meeting with Boston Economic Club, Hybrid Luncheon, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and via Zoom
William Overholt
Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
“China and America: Disengaging? Decoupling? De-risking?”
William Overholt is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He has also been director of RAND’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy and led research teams at Nomura Securities, Bankers Trust, BankBoston, and the Hudson Institute. Overholt has done political risk consulting on several Asian countries for various US government agencies and for private corporations and governments. He is the author of nine books, including Asia’s Nuclear Future (1976); Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics (2008); China’s Crisis of Success (2018); and The Rise of China: How Economic Reform is Creating a New Superpower (1993), which won the Mainichi Special Book Prize. Overholt is a long-time member of the Boston Committee on Foreign Relations and a member of our board of directors.
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Friday, November17, 2023 Lunch Hybrid meeting at Union Club of Boston
Ambassador Edward Djerejian
Former US Ambassador to Israel
“The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Geopolitical Consequences”
Edward Djerejian was the US ambassador to Syria from 1988 to 1991 and to Israel from 1993 to 1994. He has also served in US embassies in Lebanon, Morocco, the Soviet Union, and Jordan; in the White House as special assistant to President Reagan; and as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. From 1994 to 2022, Djerejian was director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and in 2013-15 he was chairman of the board of Occidental Petroleum. He is the author of Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador’s Journey through the Middle East (2009). Djerejian is currently a senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative.
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Friday, February 2, 2024 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Thomas Graham, Jr.
Former WH Aide and current Professor, Yale University
“Getting Russia Right”
Graham is a managing director at Kissinger Associates, Inc., where he focuses on Russian and Eurasian affairs. He was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007 and Director for Russian Affairs on that staff from 2002 to 2004. From 2001 to 2002, he served as the Associate Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State. From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Graham was a senior associate in the Russia/Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
From 1984 to 1998, he was a Foreign Service Officer. His assignments included two tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he served as head of the political/internal unit and acting political counselor. Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Graham is one of the founders and co-Directors of the Russian Studies Project at Yale.
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Wednesday, February 14, 2024 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Gary Samore
Prof. Brandeis University & former National Security Council official
“Can North Korea Be Deterred?”
Dr. Samore served in the U.S. government for over 20 years, focusing on nuclear arms control and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, especially in the Middle East and Asia. In that capacity, he served both President Clinton and President Obama as the senior official in the National Security Council responsible for nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Outside government, he held senior research and administrative positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Belfer Center for Science and International Security at Harvard University. He holds an MA and PhD from the Government Department of Harvard University.
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Tuesday, March 5, 2024 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch
Professor, Suffolk University
“Obstacles, Constraints, and Few Tenuous Opportunities in Israel/Palestine”
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is an Associate Professor (on sabbatical AY 2023–2024) in the Political Science & Legal Studies Department, at Suffolk University. Michal holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 2009). Her research and teaching interests include international relations theory with a focus on the role of international norms and ideas, transitional and historical justice, and the contested narrative of the conflict in Israel / Palestine. She is currently working on a book manuscript (co-authored with Jennifer M. Dixon, Villanova University) about the development trajectory of international norms with a focus on human rights norms since WWII.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Anand Menon
Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs, King’s College London; Director, UK in a Changing Europe
“Prospects for Post-Brexit Britain”
Anand Menon is professor of European politics and foreign affairs at Kings College, and director of the UK in a Changing Europe, a research network in London. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham, held visiting positions at New York University, Columbia, Science Po, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and served as a special adviser to the House of Lords. Menon has written numerous articles in journals and periodicals, and has written or edited several books, including European Politics: State of the Union, the Oxford Handbook of the European Union, and Brexit and British Politics.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 dinner meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Kenneth Juster
former American Ambassador to India
“The Evolution of the US-India Relationship”
Kenneth Ian Juster is a veteran American diplomat, who served as the United States Ambassador to India from 2017 to 2021. He has also served as a senior adviser in the State Department (1989-93), Under Secretary of Commerce (2001-5), and deputy assistant to the President and deputy director of the National Economic Council (2017). Juster has also held senior positions at the law firm of Arnold & Porter (1981-89 and 1993-2001), the software company Salesforce (2005-10), and the private equity firm Warburg Pincus (2010-17). He is currently senior counselor at the global law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, senior adviser at the institutional investor CDPQ, strategic adviser at the software company Salesforce, and distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.