On The Issues With Alon Ben-meir

Today's guest is Visar Duriqi, an investigative journalist from Kosovo. He has been working as a journalist since January of 2009. As part of Kosovo Center for Investigative Journalism, which is a project of Çohu!, an anticorruption NGO, he investigated public procurement, corruption going on in the energy sector, relations between donors to political campaigns and the public budget as well as reporting about the radicalization of Islam at a time when other media were not reporting on this topic. At BIRN and Pristina Insight, he published articles related to the economy and health system as well as organized crime and corruption, which involves groups and individuals related to politics. He also wrote articles related to religion, not necessary about radicalization but also covering some issues inside the Islamic community of Kosovo, such as the elections and the manipulation of this institution by a handful of people surrounding the Mufti of Kosovo, Mr. Naim Tërnava.  From March of 2015 to February of 201

Melissa J. Wilde is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her first book, Vatican II, won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Although most of Wilde’s research has focused on religious change, her most recent research—which she describes as the study of “complex religion”—focuses on what has not changed within American religion, in particular, the enduring ways that it intersects with race, class, and gender today. Her latest book is Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion. In this episode, we discuss gender inequality and women’s rights in religion, and particularly the issue of birth control and reproductive rights among Christian denominations.

This week's guest is Dr. Ahmet S. Yayla, Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Homeland Security at DeSales University, where he teaches courses in cybercrime, homeland security, and terrorism and counterterrorism. He formerly served as a full professor and the chair of the Department of Sociology at Harran University in Turkey. He is a 20-year veteran of the counterterrorism and operations department in the Turkish National Police and served as the chief of counterterrorism in Sanliurfa, Turkey between 2010 and 2013. He has an MS in criminal justice and a Ph.D. in information science and criminal justice from the University of North Texas. Dr. Yayla's unique position in counterterrorism rests upon his demonstrated mastery of policy, field operations and academic theory. He is an experienced practitioner in law enforcement and has advised senior government officials around the world during his career in counterterrorism and academia. Dr. Yayla has published both scholarly works and written or co-

Today’s guest is Sean Yom, Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Senior Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a specialist on regimes and governance in the Middle East, especially in Arab monarchies like Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco. In this episode, they discuss the advantages and disadvantages of monarchies versus liberal democracies, American foreign policy in the Middle East, and the United States’ relationship with Israel. Sean Yom is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Senior Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a specialist on regimes and governance in the Middle East, especially in Arab monarchies like Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco. His research engages topics of authoritarian politics, democratic reforms, institutional stability, and economic development in these countries, as well as their implications for US foreign policy. His publications include the boo

Today's guest is Sıtkı Özcan, a Turkish journalist based in the United States, where he writes for Kronos Haber. He is the former US Bureau Chief of Zaman Amerika, which was unable to remain open after the seizure of its sister publication Zaman in Turkey. In this episode, we discuss the bilateral relations between the United States and Turkey, Turkey’s relations with its regional neighbors, and Turkish President Erdogan – his politics, his standing in Turkey, and his relations with other foreign leaders.

Today's guest is Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. In this episode, we discuss Gulliver’s Troubles—the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, US involvement in Iraq and the broader Middle East, and the American role in Israeli-Palestinian peace. Full Bio Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He has written five books, including his most recent, The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President (Palgrave, 2014) and The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (Bantam, 2008). He received his PhD in Middle East and U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977. Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to

Today's guest is Abdülhamit Bilici, a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Zaman newspaper until its seizure in 2016 by the Turkish government. In this episode, we discuss Erdogan’s initial rise to power and his current political prospects, the direction of Turkey under Erdogan, and what Turkey’s political future could look like.

My guest today is Mehnaz Afridi, Director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College. In this episode, we discuss the misperception of the relationship between Jews and Muslims, what approaches can be taken to create reconciliation between Israelis and Arabs, the rise of antisemitism in the United States, and the future of religious coexistence. Mehnaz M. Afridi is the director of Manhattan College Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center. The goal of the center is to "help eradicate human suffering, prejudice, and racism through education." She is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College where she teaches Islam and the Holocaust. Her research primarily focuses on Islam and contemporary literature. She is also works on the intersections of Judaism and Islam. Her recent work has been on the Holocaust and the role of Muslims, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Mehnaz has taught at Antioch University, National University, American Interc

Today's guest is David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Project on Arab-Israel Relations. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013-2014, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, serving as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations. Author of numerous Washington Institute monographs and essays on issues related to the Middle East Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli conflict, he is also coauthor, with Dennis Ross, of the 2019 book Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny (PublicAffairs) and the 2009 Washington Post bestseller Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (Viking/Penguin). His 2017 interactive mapping project, "Settlements and Solutions," is designed to help users discover for themselves whether a

Dr. Elie Friedman is Director of the Center for Strategic Dialogue at Netanya Academic College and a researcher of communications and discourse with an emphasis on conflict studies and public diplomacy. Through his various roles at the center, he has a wealth of experience managing the various projects, including grant writing, reporting, budget management, and coordination with strategic partners and international participants in our events. Dr. Friedman completed his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Communications department and a post-doctorate at Lancaster University. He has published widely in numerous academic journals and recently published his first monograph at Routledge Academic Press, along with Prof. Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, entitled Israeli Discourse and the West Bank: Dialectics of Normalization and Estrangement. In today’s episode, we discuss the upcoming Israeli elections and the potential for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Today's guest is Govind Dwivedi. Major General G G Dwivedi retired as an Assistant Chief Integrated Defence Staff (strategic) in 2009, after 38 years of distinguished service in the Indian Army (Infantry). A Veteran of the Bangladesh War in 1971, he later commanded unit/formations in intense operational environment; as well as held important staff, instructional and foreign assignments. A graduate of National Defence Academy Kharkvasla, he holds M Sc, MBA, M.Phil (double) in Defence & Strategic Studies from Madras University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Besides Interpretership in Chinese from the School of Foreign Languages, he obtained ‘Art & Practice of Leadership Development’ and Senior Executives Programme in National/International Security from Harvard Kennedy School, USA. An alumnus of National Defence College, he has been faculty at Indian Military Academy Dehradun and Defence Services Staff College Wellington; served as Defence Attaché in China,

In this episode, I go in-depth with Marc Pierini on Turkey, Erdogan’s political future, Turkey’s relations with Europe and the West, and the future of Turkey within NATO. Marc Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on developments in the Middle East and Turkey from a European perspective. Pierini was a career EU diplomat from December 1976 to April 2012. He was EU ambassador and head of delegation to Turkey (2006–2011) and ambassador to Tunisia and Libya (2002–2006), Syria (1998–2002), and Morocco (1991–1995). He also served as the first coordinator for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, or the Barcelona Process, from 1995 to 1998 and was the main negotiator for the release of the Bulgarian hostages from Libya from 2004 to 2007. Pierini served as counselor in the cabinet of two European commissioners: Claude Cheysson, from 1979 to 1981, and Abel Matutes, from 1989 to 1991. He has published three essays in French: “Le prix de la liberté,” “Télégrammes diplomatiques,” a

Uk Lushi is an Albanian-American author and investor. He has worked for several global corporations and investment companies such as General Electric, Dynamic Credit Partners and IntTra Group. His articles and opinions have been published in the US, Germany, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania. Lushi holds a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Columbia University in New York City. In this episode, we discuss corruption in Kosovo and how to battle it.

Dr Maha Hosain Aziz is an NYU professor (MA IR Program), blogger and consultant focused on global risk & prediction. She has been called a "global thinker to watch" by Dr Nouriel Roubini for her first book Future World Order; Dr Ian Bremmer and Kishore Mahbubani call her book a "must-read." Dr Aziz is also a visiting fellow at the LSE's Institute of Global Affairs and a cartoonist who created the award-winning 2016 political comic book, The Global Kid (all sales to education nonprofits), which is being adapted into a political graphic novel. She is a Jordanian-born Pakistani who grew up in the Middle East (Jordan, Saudi Arabia), Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia), Europe (UK, Greece) and the US. And she is a social scientist trained at Brown (BA), Columbia (MA) and the LSE (MSc, PhD). In this episode, we discuss the global rise of nationalism, citizen-led movements, and the changing nature of global leadership.

William L. Rosenberg, PhD, is a Professor of Political Science at Drexel University. Rosenberg is the author of over 80 articles, papers and technical reports. He is a co-author of two books related to public opinion and public policy, "News Verdicts, the Debates and Presidential Campaigns" and "The Politics of Disenchantment: Bush, Clinton, Perot and the Press.” He is a well known expert in the presidential election process as well public opinion and media related to the campaigns. In addition, Rosenberg has served as Principal Investigator on a number of large-scale multi-year evaluation studies for various government agencies at both the state and national level. He has also served on a variety of National Advisory Panels for the Department of HHS. In addition to his evaluation research, he has been active in conducting opinion research on immigration related issues. He is an expert in conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies using telephone, web, mail, intercept, and in-person surveys as wel

Dr. Ian Lustick teaches courses at the University of Pennsylvania on Middle Eastern politics, comparative politics, political identities and institutions, techniques of hegemonic analysis, the expansion and contraction of states, and on relationships among complexity, evolution, and politics. He is a recipient of awards from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Middle East Peace Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to Penn, Professor Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair. Before coming to Penn he taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College and worked for one year in the Department of State. His present research focuses on the demise of states and the implications of the disappearance of the option of a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Associat

Brendan O'Leary is an Irish, European Union, and US citizen, and since 2003 has been the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of 26 books; and the author or co-author of hundreds of articles or chapters in peer-reviewed journals and university presses, encyclopedia articles, and numerous other forms of publication. Professor O’Leary was the inaugural winner of the Juan Linz prize of the International Political Science Association for contributions to the study of multinational societies, federalism and power-sharing, and in 2016 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, principally because of his contributions to the field of power-sharing. In addition to his scholarly work, O’Leary has been a political and constitutional advisor to the United Nations, the European Union, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the Governments of the UK and Ireland, and to the British Labour Party (before and during the Iri

Artan Haraqija is an investigative journalist with 20 years’ experience covering organized crime, corruption, radical religious groups and the European Union Integration in the Balkans, and international media organizations. He has a Master’s Degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Westminster in London, UK. In this episode, we discuss radicalization in Kosovo, the increased religious influence from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the lack of protection for journalists, corruption, and what hope the people of Kosovo can have towards their future.

Thanassis Cambanis is an author, journalist and fellow at The Century Foundation, who specializes in the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is co-director of TCF’s “Arab Politics beyond the Uprisings.” His most recent book, Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story (Simon and Schuster: 2015), chronicles Egyptian efforts to create a new political order. His first book, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, was published in 2010. He writes “The Internationalist” column for The Boston Globe Ideas, and regularly contributes to The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and The New York Times. He has taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and as a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He lives in Beirut. See more of his writing at thanassiscambanis.com.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Mary Beth Altier about statebuilding and political violence, using the example of Northern Ireland as a way to examine conflicts and political violence in the Middle East, particularly by way of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Dr. Mary Beth Altier is a Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2011 and then worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Pennsylvania State University on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.K. government funded project on terrorist disengagement, re-engagement, and recidivism. She also worked as a postdoctoral researcher on a project on civil war and democratization based at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Dr. Altier’s research interests are in international security, foreign policy, political violence, and political behavior. Her recent work centers on the reasons why individuals support the use of political violence in developed and developing democr