Events Detail

 

 

held a conference on

Syria: Challenges and Opportunities for the New Administration

Thursday, March 26, 2009
10:30AM - 3:00PM

 

 

By recently sending two top envoys to Syria, the Obama White House is signaling the change it promised by engaging Damascus. What opportunities might the new administration be able to exploit, given the changing regional and international dynamics? What challenges can the Americans expect to face? And not least of all, what will U.S. engagement with Bashar al-Assad's regime mean for Syrian opposition movements?

On Thursday, March 26, Hudson Institute gathered several well-known analysts and opposition leaders to discuss these and other questions that may be faced as U.S.-Syrian relations move forward.

Keynote address:

Lee Smith is a Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow and a Lebanon and Syria analyst. Smith's book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, will be published this fall by Doubleday.

First Panel:
The Syrian Regime: Between Terror and Diplomacy
11:00AM - 12:30PM

John Hannah, a senior foreign policy official in both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past twenty years, was Vice President Cheney's national security advisor from 2005-2009. He is currently a Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.

Bashar Elsbihi is the Washington Executive Director of the National Salvation Front in Syria and Senior Executive Producer and Bureau Chief for the Washington office of Zenoubia TV.

Abdulbaset Sieda, Ph.D., is an educator and author of numerous books, including Forgotten Seasons of Continual Sufferings: The Kurdish Question in Syria.

Tony Badran, a Research Fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is the author of a well-respected blog, Across the Bay, where he reports and comments on political developments impacting Lebanon and Syria. He is editor of the Syria Opposition Portal, a website that tracks news from within the various Syrian opposition movements.

Lunch Break:
12:30 – 1:00PM

Second Panel:
The Future of the Syrian Opposition Movements
1:00 - 3:00PM

Abdul Razak Eid, Ph.D., is the author of more than twenty-five books and co-founder of the Committees for Civil Societies in Syria. He lives in exile in Paris.

Najib Ghadbian, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas and author of The Second Assad Regime: Bashar of Lost Opportunities.

Radwan Ziadeh, Ph.D., is the Founder and Director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University.

 

Ahed Alhendi is a human rights activist and ex-political prisoner and is a founding member of the unofficial youth movement Syrian Youth for Justice.

Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center
Hudson Institute
1015 15th St, NW, 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005