Wednesday, September 18, 2024 Hybrid Luncheon, Union Club of Boston and via Zoom
Simon Saradzhyan
Founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
“Drivers of Russia’s Military Interventions: When Does Vladimir Putin Send Troops Abroad?”
Dr. Saradzhyan is the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Saradzhyan also helps advance the center’s U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism.
Prior to joining the Belfer Center in 2008 as a full-time research fellow, he worked as a researcher, consultant, and journalist in Russia. He was an editor at Moscow Times, a senior fellow at the East-West Institute, and a consultant for the World Bank.
Saradzhyan has written articles for The Times of London, Financial Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Foreign Affairs, and has appeared on the BBC, CBS, NPR, and Al Jazeera, as well as on Russian and Armenian TV and radio. He has also testified before Congress on nuclear terrorism and violent extremism.
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Monday, October 7 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Khalil Shikaki
Founder and Director, Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research, and Senior Fellow, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University
“One Year After October 7: How the War Affected the Prospects for Palestinian-Israeli and Regional Peace“
Khalil Shikaki is founder and director of the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, Palestine, and senior fellow at Brandeis’ Crown Center for Middle East Studies. He has also been a visiting fellow at Brookings and taught at Najah University in Nablus and at several American universities. Shikaki has written numerous articles and reports on the Arab Spring, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and Palestinian politics and governance. Since 1993, he has designed and directed over 300 surveys of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Results of recent surveys on Palestinian attitudes toward Hamas, the war in Gaza, a two-state solution, and other topics are available at https://www.pcpsr.org/en
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Tuesday, December 3rd lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Karen Elliot House
Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and former journalist and managing editor at the Wall Street Journal.
“Saudi Arabia: New and Improved“
Karen Elliott House has served as a reporter, assistant foreign editor, foreign editor, vice president, president, and publisher at the Wall Street Journal. In 1984 she received a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Middle East, and she has also received several other journalism awards for her reporting on foreign affairs. House has served on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Boston University, the Asia Society, the Rand Corporation, and the Trilateral Commission. Her book, On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines – and Future was published in 2012. House is currently a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
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Wednesday, December 18, 2024 (Zoom only meeting)
Amos Yadlin
former Israeli Air Force General
“Israel’s Seven-Front War: Strategic Insights from the Past Year, and the Path Forward” 1
Amos Yadlin served as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), flying 250 combat missions in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, in Operation Opera, which destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, and in the Lebanon War in 1982. Later, he was the head of the IAF’s planning department, IAF deputy commander, and commander of the Israeli Defense Force’s National Defense College and its Military Intelligence Directorate. Yadlin also served as military attaché at the Israeli embassy in Washington. After retiring from the IAF, he has been a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, and senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
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Friday January 17, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
David Logan
Asst. Prof. of Security Studies, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
“The Growing Risks of Nuclear Competition in US-China Relations”
David Logan is assistant professor of security studies at Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has also taught at the Naval War College and has been a fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program and Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies. Logan has published numerous articles in professional journals on the Chinese military and US-China relations.
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Tuesday, January 28, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Joseph Nye
former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former Chair of the National Intelligence Council
“What will Trump mean for the American Century?”
Joseph Nye is University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He has also been dean of its Kennedy School of Government, director of its Center for International Affairs, and associate dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Nye served as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and chair of the National Intelligence Council. He has served on the boards of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as a member of the executive committee of the Trilateral Commission. A 2008 survey of 1700 international relations scholars ranked Nye as the sixth most influential scholar of the previous 20 years and the most influential on American foreign policy. Nye has written numerous books, including Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics; Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era; The Future of Power; Is the American Century Over?; and Do Morals Matter? Foreign Policy and the President from FDR to Trump. His most recent book is A Life in the American Century.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Ali Banuazizi
Research Professor of Political Science, Boston College; Research Fellow, Center for International Studies, M.I.T.
“Iran and the New Geopolitics of the Middle East“
Ali Banuazizi is research professor of political science at Boston College and former director of its Program in Islamic Civilization and Societies. He has also taught at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Hebrew University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Tehran. He has served as founding editor of the journal Iranian Studies, as president of the International Society for Iranian Studies and of the Middle East Studies Association, and as a member of the editorial boards of the World Book and several scholarly journals. Banuazizi is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on Iran and its region, including The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan and Social Classes, State, and Revolution in Iran.
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Monday, February 24, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Dmytro Kuleba
Former Foreign Minister, Ukraine
“How the War Ends: Consequences for Ukraine, the US, and the World“
Dmytro Kuleba was Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs from March 2020 until September 2024. He has also served as Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European relations, its permanent representative to the Council of Europe, and ambassador at large for strategic communications. Kuleba is currently a non-resident senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and an adjunct professor at Science Po in Paris.
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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 dinner meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Youssef Chahed
Former Prime Minister, Tunisia
“Building Democracy in Syria and Around the Arab World: An Insider’s Perspective“
Youssef Chahed served as prime minister of Tunisia from 2016 to 2020, the youngest prime minister in Tunisia’s history. Before that, he was Secretary of State for Fisheries and Minister of Local Affairs. Chahed has also taught agricultural economics in France and in several other countries and since 2022 has been a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
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Friday, March 14, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Peter Hall
Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies and a Faculty Associate of the Weatherhead Center and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Successful Societies Program for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
“Explaining Rising Support for Right Populist Parties in Europe“
Peter Hall is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. He has also visited at Princeton, Stanford, the London School of Economics, Instituto Juan March in Madrid, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, and at several German research institutes. Hall has also served as associate dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and as director of its Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies. He has written or edited over 100 articles and 12 books, including Varieties of Capitalism; Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health; and most recently Political Change and Electoral Coalitions in Western Democracies.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Rochelle Walensky
Former Director, CDC
“Lessons from the Front Lines of Public Health“
Rochelle Walensky was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2021 to 2023, during the height of the COVID pandemic. From 2001 until 2021, she taught at Harvard Medical School. She was also chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Mass General Hospital and sat on its Board of Directors. Walensky has published over 300 scientific articles. Her research has focused on promoting access to HIV/AIDS care in the US and internationally. She is currently a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and at its Business School.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Jeffrey Frankel
Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth – Harvard Kennedy School
“Taking a Sledgehammer to US Global Leadership: Trump’s Tariffs”
Jeffrey Frankel is the Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he has served on its Business Cycle Dating Committee, the official arbiter of when US recessions begin and end. Frankel has also been a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1996-99 and served on its staff in 1983-84. He taught economics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1979 to 1999, and has had visiting appointments at the Federal Reserve System, the International Monetary Fund, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Yale, and the University of Michigan.
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Thursday, June 5, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Stephen Walt
Stephen is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
“A Shock to the System: What to Expect in the Emerging World Order”
Stephen Walt is Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he was also academic dean from 2002 to 2006. He has also taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago, where he was deputy dean of social sciences. Walt has had resident positions at Brookings Institution and at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and has consulted for the Institute for Defense Analysis, the Center for Naval Analysis, and the National Defense University. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Affairs and the author of several books, including Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy and The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which was a New York Times best seller. His most recent book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy.
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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 Zoom-only meeting
Ambassador John Sullivan
Former Deputy Secretary of State & Former US Ambassador to Russia
“Russia’s War Against the West”
Ambassador John Sullivan was US ambassador to Russia from December 2019 until October 2022, and Deputy Secretary of State from May 2017 to December 2019. He has also served as Deputy General Counsel in the Defense Department, General Counsel and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. Sullivan is currently co-lead of the national security practice at Meyer Brown, a law firm in Washington and New York. He recently described his experiences as ambassador to Moscow in Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines in Russia’s War Against the West, published in August 2024.
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Tuesday, July 29, 2025 Zoom-only meeting
Ambassador Barbara Leaf
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs and former Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates
“The Middle East after the 12-day War”
Ambassador Barbara Leaf was assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2022 to 2025 and US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from 2015 to 2018. She has also served as special assistant to the President and senior director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Security Council, and has worked in US embassies in Paris, Sarajevo, and Rome. Leaf is currently senior international policy advisor at Arnold and Porter, a law firm in Washington.
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Monday, August 25, 2025 Zoom-only meeting
Ray Takeyh
Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
“Iran Between War and Peace”
Ray Takeyh was born and raised in Tehran. After receiving a doctorate from Oxford, he moved to the United States. Takeyh has served as senior adviser on Iran in the State Department, and has been a fellow at Yale, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Middle East Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been a professor at the National War College and the National Defense University. Takeyh has written over 300 articles and columns and has authored or co-authored six books, including The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East (2016) and most recently The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty (2021).
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Friday, September 5, 2025 Zoom-only meeting
Mara Karlin
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities and
Professor of Practice, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
“The Changing Character of Conflict: Implications for the United States”
Mara Karlin was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategic Plans and Capabilities from 2021 to 2023. She has also held several other positions in the Defense Department at the assistant secretary level or higher. Karlin is currently professor of practice at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies, co-director of its Master of Arts program in strategy, cybersecurity, and intelligence, and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is the author of two books, Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States (2018), and The Inheritance: America’s Military After Two Decades of War (2021).