SOLD OUT! Challenges in the Middle East

As the new administration grapples with pressing and competing domestic and international priorities, the Middle East remains a region of complex and growing challenges and threats. From the fight against ISIS in Iraq to the brutal war in Syria to Mideast peace to the fate of the Iran deal, the Middle East continues to challenge U.S. policymakers. With the first 100 days of the Trump administration approaching, join the World Affairs Council for a look at the direction of U.S. policy in the region. Former Middle East advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and current Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Daniel Benaim will offer an assessment of and update on this critical region.

About the speaker:

Daniel Benaim is a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, researching U.S. policy in the Middle East, as well as a visiting lecturer at New York University. Previously, he served as a Middle East policy advisor and foreign policy speechwriter at The White House, the State Department, and the U.S. Senate. He was also an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Until June 2015, he was foreign policy speechwriter and Middle East advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, traveling with the vice president to 25 countries. Before that, he wrote speeches for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Secretaries Bill Burns and Tom Nides and served as a member of Secretary Clinton’s policy planning staff covering Egypt. Benaim also has been a professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chief speechwriter to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and a detailee to the National Security Council staff. Additionally, he designed and taught a graduate speechwriting course at The George Washington University.

Benaim’s writings on behalf of government officials have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs. Publications under his own name include the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, and The American Prospect. He received his M.A. in law and diplomacy from The Fletcher School and his B.A. in English literature from Yale University. He is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations.

About the moderator:

Nova Robinson is an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Seattle University. Her research is positioned at the intersection of Middle Eastern history, women’s history, and the history of international governance. Her dissertation was on transnational Syrian and Lebanese women’s activism in the early twentieth century. It exposed how that activism contributed to the construction of international women’s rights norms. Her article “Arab Internationalism and Gender: Perspectives from the Third Session of the UNCSW, 1949” was published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in Summer 2016. Another article, “‘Women’s point of view was apt to be forgotten’: The Liaison Committee of International Women’s Organizations’ Campaign for an International Women’s Convention, 1920-1953,” can be found in The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). She is working on a book manuscript provisionally titled, Arab Women and International Women’s Rights, 1910-1965. Robinson has been living, working, and conducting research in the Middle East since 2005. She received her PhD from Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey in 2015.