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Princeton Committee on Foreign Relations
Speaker: 24-Feb-2010 - Dr. Paul Sprachman Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist and a demographer by training, is also a senior adviser to the National Board of Asian Research, a member of the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty. He is the author of numerous monographs and articles on North and South Korea, East Asia, and countries all around the globe. His most recent book is The Poverty of the Poverty Rate (AEI Press, 2008). Future Speaker: 13-Apr-2010 - Amb. Barbara Bodine
Vice Director for Undergraduate Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Rutgers University
Dr. Sprachman is one of America's foremost experts on Iranian culture, language, and daily life. He travels to Iran regularly and has developed keen insights about trends in the country. Dr. Sprachman will be able to address the history of the country, current trends in popular thinking and the pulse of the people in this society so enigmatic to many in the West. He will be able to offer insights about the history, stability, and governance of the society from the "bottom up", as opposed to a "top down" diplomatic view of US-Iranian relations.
Future Speaker: 17-Mar-2010 - Nicholas Eberstadt
Diplomat in Residence
Princeton University
Former Ambassador to Yemen 1997-2001
Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine is lecturer and diplomat-in-residence at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where she teaches courses on the Iraq War and on US diplomacy in the Middle East as it relates to the Gulf region and southwest Asia.
Ms. Bodine's over 30 years in the US Foreign Service were spent primarily on Arabian Peninsula and great Persian Gulf issues, specifically US bilateral and regional policy, strategic security issues, counterterrorism, and governance and reform. Her tour as Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen 1997 -2001, saw enhanced support for democratization and increased security and counterterrorism cooperation, the establishment of a coast guard, resumption of Fulbright scholarships for Yemeni students, initiation of a $40 million/year economic assistance and development program, and an indigenous landmine awareness and demining program. Ms. Bodine also served in Baghdad as Deputy Principal Officer during the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait as Deputy Chief of Mission during to Iraqi invasion and occupation of 1990-1991, and again, seconded to the Department of Defense, in Iraq in 2003 as the senior State Department official and the first coalition coordinator for reconstruction in Baghdad and the Central governorates.
In addition to several assignments in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, she was Associate Coordinator for Counterterrorism Operations and subsequently acting overall Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Director of East African Affairs, Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, and Senior Advisor for International Security Negotiations and Agreements in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
Since leaving the government, Ambassador Bodine has been Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Governance Initiative in the Middle East at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, Fellow at the School's Center for Public Leadership and Institute of Politics, and the Robert Wilhelm Fellow at MIT's Center for Public Leadership and Institute of Politics, and the Robert Wilhelm Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies. She has also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and lectures at universities and civic groups across the country and abroad as well as a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC and other media.
Ambassador Bodine is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Secretary's Award for valor for her work in occupied Kuwait, the Secretary's Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Santa Barbara, and has been recognized for her work by other agencies. She is the President of the Mine Action Group, America, a global NGO that provides technical expertise for the removal of remnants of conflict worldwide.
Ms. Bodine is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is a past Regent of the University of California.
