 A Syrian woman walks with a boy past a banner showing Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, June 1, 2018. |
On August 29, Hudson Institute will host a panel to discuss the obstacles complicating reconstruction in Syria. Panelists will include: Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian civil servant; Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute; Mike Pregent, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute; Matthew RJ Brodsky, a Middle East expert, geopolitical analyst, and senior fellow at the Security Studies Group; and Randa Slim, the director of conflict resolution and the Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute.
PROGRAM
- Registration & Lunch
- Introduction
- Speaker Remarks & Discussion
- Audience Q & A
WHERE
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 400 Washington, DC 20004WHEN
12:00pm to 1:30pm ET
SPEAKERS Bassam Barabandi Charles Lister Matthew RJ Brodsky Randa Slim
Mike Pregent is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in Middle East and North Africa political and security issues, counter-terrorism analysis, stakeholder communications, and strategic planning. He formerly served as an adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. Pregent is a former intelligence officer with over 28 years experience working security, terrorism, counter-insurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. He has been published in Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Tower Magazine, Long War Journal, New America Foundation, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Business Insider, and The Daily Beast.
Bassam Barabandi is a native of Deir Azzour, Syria. Barabandi worked in the diplomatic civil service of the Syrian government for 14 years before leaving the Syrian Embassy in Washington in the summer of 2013 and co-founding People Demand Change. Barabandi has a Bachelor of Arts in political science and public administration from the American University of Beirut and speaks fluent Arabic and English.
Charles Lister is a senior fellow and director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute. His work focuses primarily on the conflict in Syria, including as a member of the MEI-convened Syria Study Group; and on issues of terrorism and insurgency across the Levant. Prior to this, Lister was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Qatar and a Senior Consultant to the multinationally-backed Syria Track II Dialogue Initiative, where he managed nearly three years of intensive face-to-face engagement with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups. Lister's book, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, was published in February 2016 by Oxford University Press
Matthew RJ Brodsky is a Middle East expert, geopolitical analyst, and Senior Fellow at the Security Studies Group. Previously, he was the director of policy for the DC-based think tank, the Jewish Policy Center (JPC) and the Editor of the JPC's journal, inFOCUS Quarterly. Before joining the JPC, Mr. Brodsky was a Legacy Heritage Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.
Randa Slim is director of the Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute and a non-resident fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) Foreign Policy Institute. A former vice president of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, Slim has been a senior program advisor at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a guest scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, a program director at Resolve, Inc, and a program officer at the Kettering Foundation. A long-term practitioner of Track II dialogue and peace-building processes in the Middle East and Central Asia, she is the author of several studies, book chapters, and articles on conflict management, post-conflict peace-building, and Middle East politics.