Kleptocracy Initiative

Hudson’s Kleptocracy Initiative (KI) examines the growing threat posed to Western democracies by autocratic regimes. The Achilles’ heel of today’s autocracies is they are politically structured as kleptocracies, creating the potential to expose the massive and often hidden financial mechanisms used to shelter misappropriated assets. Today’s unchecked autocracies/kleptocracies are demonstrating contempt for international law, resulting in territorial expansionism and cyber attacks that seriously threaten US national security.

KI conducts original research on the financial practices of autocratic governments and their leaders, and works to design new and effective policies aimed at limiting the ability of hostile foreign actors to abscond with national assets and use those assets against both their own citizens and the United States and its allies. KI promotes its work through in-depth research, daily news updates, frequent briefings for policymakers and journalists in the U.S. and overseas, and on this webpage, which features a broad array of resources for policy professionals in and out of government—and for the public-at-large:

• A library of books and articles, and a database of primary documents
• Text, podcasts, and video associated with KI’s policy studies, meetings, and conferences
• Links to other organizations working on related issues

The Kleptocracy Initiative’s Advisory Council comprises highly distinguished thought leaders and experts from the fields of policymaking, academia, and journalism. Its members provide strategic guidance in support of KI’s mission.

Jack Blum is Chairman of Tax Justice Network USA. An attorney and expert on white-collar financial crime and international tax evasion, Blum spent fourteen years as a staff attorney with the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He played a central role in the Lockheed Aircraft bribery investigation in the 1970’s, which led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and in the investigation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Blum has served as a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations and the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention. Mr. Blum often testifies about money laundering and tax evasion before congressional committees, serves as a qualified expert to domestic governmental agencies and provides anti-money laundering training to domestic and foreign governmental agencies. Mr. Blum is the co-author of “Financial Havens, Banking Secrecy & Money Laundering,” UNDCP Technical Series, United Nations, 1998. In addition, his articles have been published in a number of books, including Transnational Crime in the Americas (“Offshore Money”) (Tom Farrer ed., 1999). He is a former Senior Editor of Crime, Law and Social Change: An International Journal.

William Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. He was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country as a result of his battle against corporate corruption. Since 2009, when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison after uncovering a $230 million fraud committed by Russian government officials, Browder has been leading a global campaign to expose the corruption and human rights abuses endemic in Russia. Consequentially, the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act” was signed into US law in 2012, imposing visa bans and asset freezes on certain officials involved in Magnitsky’s death, and on other gross violators of human rights in Russia. Browder is currently working to have similar legislation passed across the European Union as a means to seek justice for Magnitsky and fight government-backed corruption in Russia. Before founding Hermitage, Browder was Vice-President at Salomon Brothers. He holds a BA (Honours) in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford Business School.

Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for the Study off Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors have shaped the governance and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. He is author and/or editor of six academic books, including Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale 2017), co-authored with John Heathershaw. In addition to his academic research, Professor Cooley serves on several international advisory boards and has testified about Central Asian governance issues to the United States Congress and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Diane Francis is an American-Canadian veteran journalist and author specializing in tech, white collar crime, geopolitics and business. She is Editor-at-Large, Canada’s National Post; non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC; Adjunct Faculty at Singularity University in Mountain View California and Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University’s business school in Toronto. She has written ten books and writes for periodicals around the world.

Clay R. Fuller is a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on authoritarian governance, corruption, and the means through which dictators, terrorists, and criminals use free markets to restrict freedom, sow discord, and legitimize their actions. He also collects data on the use of special economic zones and sovereign wealth funds in nondemocratic countries. He has taught international relations, American government, and modern dictatorships, among other courses, at the University of South Carolina, Western Carolina University, and Texas State University. Dr. Fuller has been published in peer-review journals, popular magazines, and newspapers on topics surrounding authoritarian political economy. He is currently working on a book, “The Economic Foundations of Authoritarian Rule.” His other forthcoming studies include “The Who and the How of Authoritarian Rule,” “The Rise of Authoritarian Liberalism,” and “Authoritarian Corruption Theory (ACT).” He has four degrees in political science: a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the University of South Carolina, another M.A. from Texas State University, and a B.A. from West Virginia State University.

Adam Garfinkle is Founding Editor of The American Interest. Before founding The American Interest in 2005, he served from 2003-2005 as principal speechwriter to both Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell. He was editor of The National Interestand has taught at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, and other institutions of higher learning. Garfinkle served as a member of the National Security Study Group of the US Commission on National Security/21st Century (the Hart-Rudman Commission), and as an aide to Senator Henry M. Jackson. A widely published scholar, Garfinkle has received awards and grants from the US Department of State, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, the American Academy in Berlin, the German Marshall Fund, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Moshe Dayan Center for the Study of Middle Eastern and African Affairs at Tel Aviv University. His most recent book is Jewcentricity: How the Jews Get Praised, Blamed and Used to Explain Nearly Everything (Wiley, 2009). His Telltale Hearts: The Origin and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (St. Martin’s) was named a “notable book of the year” (1995) in the New York Times Book Review. Garfinkle received his PhD in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeffrey Gedmin is Co-Director of the Transatlantic Renewal Project at the World Affairs Institute and Journal in Washington, DC. He also serves as Chairman of the Global Politics and Security program at Georgetown University, and as Senior Advisor at Blue Star Strategies, LLC. Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Masters Program and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London. From 2011 to 2014, Gedmin was President and CEO of the London-based Legatum Institute, where he was responsible for the Institute’s strategic direction, budget, board relations, fund raising, research, and programmatic agenda. Prior to joining the Legatum Institute, Gedmin served for four years as President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. As RFE/RL President and CEO, Gedmin reported directly to the bi-partisan Broadcast Board of Governors, whose membership includes the U.S. Secretary of State. Before RFE/RL, Gedmin served as President and CEOof the Aspen Institute in Berlin. He was previously a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C and Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Endowment for Democracy’s Research Council, the Board of Directors for the journal Turkish Policy Quarterly, and a member of the editorial board of the World Affairs Journal. In addition, he is a board member at the Institute for State Effectiveness and the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Development, University of California. He has been an Honorary Professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany and currently serves on the board of the Masters Program of Georgetown University’s Foreign Service School.

Benjamin Haddad is a research fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in European and transatlantic affairs. A lecturer in international affairs at Sciences Po Paris, Haddad has briefed and advised senior French leaders on foreign policy issues. Haddad’s articles have appeared in publications that include Politique Etrangère, The American Interest, L’Opinion, Global Policy, and Atlantico. He holds an MA in international security from Sciences Po Paris and an MA in economics from HEC.

James S. Henry is a lawyer, economist, and investigative journalist. He is Managing Director of the Sag Harbor Group (SHG Inc.), and co-Chair of Tax Justice Network – USA. He is also the founder and Editor of SubmergingMarkets™, a web blog devoted to a critical analysis of political and economic development issues, and first-hand investigations. Henry’s articles on “financial investigations” have appeared in many leading publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Conference Board, The Washington Post, US News, Manhattan Inc., Harpers, The Washington Monthly, Fortune, Business Week, The Nation, Newsweek, Time, The Tax Lawyer, Jornal do Brasil, The Manila Chronicle, La Nacion, El Fi-nanciero, and Slate. Henry’s books include, with Paul Starr and Ray Bonner, The Discarded Army – A Study of the Veterans Administration and Vietnam Veterans. (NY: Charterhouse, 1976); Banqueros y Lavadolares. (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1996); The Internet’s Impact on Financial Services. (NY: AT Kearney, 1999); The Blood Bankers (NY: Avalon/ Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003); and Pirate Bankers (NY: Avalon, 2007). Henry is an graduate of Harvard College (Magna, Social Studies ’72; Decatur Prize;, Chairman, Institute of Politics, Student Advisory Committee); Harvard Law School (J.D., Honors, ‘76); Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (M.S. A.B.D., Economics, ‘78; ABD – dissertation ’05). He is an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and INSPIRE Fellow at its Institute for Global Leadership.

David J. Kramer is the Affiliated Senior Fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University. He was Senior Director for Human Rights and Human Freedoms at the McCain Institute between 2014 and 2017, and had previously served as President of Freedom House since 2010. Prior to joining Freedom House, Kramer was a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Kramer served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from March 2008 to January 2009. He also was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus affairs as well as regional non-proliferation issues. Previously, he worked as a Professional Staff Member in the Secretary of State’s Office of Policy Planning, as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, and served as Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy in Washington. Before joining the U.S. Government, Kramer was a Senior Fellow at the Project for the New American Century, Associate Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Assistant Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Kramer was a Lecturer in Russian Studies at Clark University in Worcester, MA and a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. He also served as an analyst for the Christian Science Monitor Network during the collapse of the Soviet Union. A native of Massachusetts, Kramer received his M.A. in Soviet studies from Harvard University and his B.A. in Soviet Studies and Political Science from Tufts University.

Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.  He has also taught at Harvard and Columbia Universities and at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and served as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. A contributor to such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and The London Observer, Professor Mandelbaum served for 23 years as the associate director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Project on American Relations With the Former Communist World.  He serves on the Board of Advisors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington-based organization sponsoring research and public discussion on American policy toward the Middle East. Born in 1946, Professor Mandelbaum is a graduate of Yale College.  He earned his Master’s degree at King’s College, Cambridge University and his doctorate at Harvard University. Professor Mandelbaum is the author or co-author of numerous articles and essays and of fifteen books: The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons 1946-1976 (1979); The Nuclear Revolution: International Politics Before and After Hiroshima (1981); The Nuclear Future (1983); Reagan and Gorbachev (with Strobe Talbott, 1987); The Global Rivals (with Seweryn Bialer, 1988); The Fate of Nations: The Search For National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1988); and The Dawn of Peace in Europe (1996);   The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (2002); The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football and Basketball and What They See When They Do (2004); The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-first Century (2006); Democracy’s Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World’s Most Popular Form of Government (2007);  The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (2010) ; That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back, (with Thomas L. Friedman, 2011);  The Road to Global Prosperity ( 2014); and Mission Failure: American and the World in the Post-Cold War Era (2016). He is also the editor of twelve books.

Casey Michel is a journalist and researcher who has worked in both the U.S. and former Soviet Union. He also holds a Master’s degree in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. His writings and research have been featured in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, The New Republic, POLITICO Magazine, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Washington Post, The Guardian, and ThinkProgress among others, and he has offered analysis and commentary for outlets including NPR, Deutsche Welle, The Economist, and BBC. Casey has additionally provided consultancy services for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Freedom House, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Center on Global Interests. He also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan.

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and the director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.  He is also a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Prior to joining CMC in July 2009, Pei was a senior associate and the director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. His research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard 1994); China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy(Harvard 2006), andChina’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Harvard 2016). Pei’s research has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Modern China, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and many edited books. His op-eds have appeared in theFinancial Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and other major newspapers. Pei received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.  He was on the faculty at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998.

David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has testified frequently on Russian affairs before Congressional committees. Satter has written three books about Russia: Russia: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale, 2011); Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Knopf, 1996; paperback, Yale 2001); and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale 2003). His books have been translated into Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Czech, Portuguese and Vietnamese. His first book, Age of Delirium, has been made into a documentary film in a U.S. – Latvian – Russian joint production.

Louise Shelley is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and a University Professor at George Mason University. She is in the Schar School of Policy and Government and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) that she founded. She is a leading expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime and corruption as well as human trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism with a particular focus on the former Soviet Union. She also specializes in illicit financial flows and money laundering. She has just completed an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship is completing her  book on illicit trade and sustainability under contract with Princeton University Press. Dr. Shelley received her undergraduate degree cum laude from Cornell University in Penology and Russian literature. She holds an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. She studied at the Law Faculty of Moscow State University on IREX and Fulbright Fellowships and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. She held a Fulbright and researched and taught on crime issues in Mexico. She has also taught on transnational crime in Italy. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim, NEH, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright Fellowships and received a MacArthur Grant to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Centers and recently completed a MacArthur grant studying non-state actors and nuclear proliferation. In 1992, she received the Scholar-Teacher prize of American University, the top academic award of the university. Her most recent book: Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism has been published by Cambridge University Press this year. She is the author of Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2010), Policing Soviet Society (Routledge, 1996), Lawyers in Soviet Worklife and Crime and Modernization, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime and corruption. She is also an editor (with Sally Stoecker) of Human Traffic and Transnational Crime: Eurasian and American Perspectives. From 1995-2014, Dr. Shelley ran programs in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia with leading specialists on the problems of organized crime and corruption. She has also been the principal investigator of large-scale projects on money laundering from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia and of training of law enforcement persons on the issue of trafficking in persons as well as wildlife trafficking She has testified before the House Committee on International Relations Committee, the Helsinki Commission, the House Banking Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Task Force on Terrorist Financing on transnational crime, human trafficking and the links between transnational crime, financial crime and terrorism. Professor Shelley served on the Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade and Organized Crime of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and was the first co-chair of its Council on Organized Crime.  She presently co-chairs a group on human trafficking within the WEF. Professor Shelley is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has spoken at various international fora and at many universities both in the United States and abroad on transnational crime, terrorism, human trafficking, illicit trade and corruption. Additionally, she often appears on television and radio, including appearances on CNN, NPR’s Marketplace and Takeaway, PBS, A&E, the History Channel, C-span, Tavis Smiley,  Kojo Nnamdi and 60 Minutes as well as in the European media such as Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die Welt.

Jodi Vittori is an expert on the linkages of corruption, state fragility, illicit finance, and U.S. national security.  Dr. Vittori is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the National Defense University, where she lectures on political economy, economic development, corruption, transnational crime, terrorist finance, and irregular warfare.  She is also a Senior Policy Adviser for the non-governmental organization Global Witness, where she manages educational and advocacy activities to raise awareness of linkages between corruption and national security. Prior to joining Global Witness, Dr. Vittori served in the U.S. Air Force, obtaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; her overseas service included Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and she was assigned to NATO’s only counter-corruption task force. She is the author of the book Terrorist Financing and Resourcing and a co-author of the handbook Corruption Threats and International Missions:  Practical Guidance for Leaders.

John Walters is Chief Operating Officer of Hudson Institute, overseeing operations, including staff and research management. From December 2001 to January 2009, Walters was Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and a cabinet member during the Bush Administration. As the nation’s “Drug Czar,” Mr. Walters guided all aspects of federal drug policy and programs—supporting efforts that drove down teen drug use 25 percent, increased substance abuse treatment and screening in the healthcare system and dramatically dropped the availability of cocaine and methamphetamine in the U.S. He also helped build critical programs to counter narcoterrorism in Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan. From 1996 until 2001, Walters served as President of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of charitable foundations and individual donors. His prior government service includes work at ONDCP, at its founding in 1989 as Chief of Staff, and later as Deputy Director of Supply Reduction. He was Assistant to the Secretary and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan Administration and served in the Division of Education Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1982-1985. Mr. Walters has taught political science at Michigan State University’s James Madison College and at Boston College. He holds a BA from Michigan State University and a MA from the University of Toronto.

Janine R. Wedel is an award-winning author who writes about governance, corruption, influence elites, and accountability in the West and eastern Europe through the lens of a social anthropologist. A University Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, she also has been named a Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath, UK, and Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Wedel’s books have been widely and favorably reviewed. Her Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (Pegasus, 2014; kindle & paperback, 2016), was named in Bloomberg’s survey of 2014 favorite reads. Her other prizewinning books include Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (Basic Books, 2009); and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (Palgrave, 2001). She has also published Political Rigging: A Primer on Political Capture and Influence in the Twenty-First Century (with Nazia Hussain and Dana Dolan; Oxfam America, 2017); Confronting Corruption, Building Accountability (with Lloyd J. Dumas; Palgrave, 2010); The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism (edited, translated, and introductions; Columbia University Press, 1992); and The Private Poland (1986). A five-time Fulbright fellow, Wedel also won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (previous winners include Samuel Huntington and Mikhail Gorbachev), as well as major awards from the National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, New America Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Institute for New Economic Thinking, among others. A public intellectual, Wedel has contributed analysis pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including the Financial Times, New York Times, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and Wall Street Journal Europe, and her work has been reviewed or translated into more than a dozen languages. Wedel’s stops on the lecture circuit include TEDx, National Press Club, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, Oxford, London Business School, Freie Universität (Berlin), United Nations University/WIDER (Helsinki), OECD, and many others. Wedel is co-founder and past president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), a section of the American Anthropological Association.

Andrew Wedeman received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994 and is a Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, where he heads up the China Studies Initiative. Prior to this appointment, he was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he also served as the Director of the Asian Studies Program and the Director of the International Studies Program. He has held posts as a visiting Research Professor at Beijing University, a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins Nanjing University Center for Sino-American Studies, and a Fulbright Research Professor at Taiwan National University. His publications include Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China (Cornell); From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism, and Marketization in China (Cambridge); numerous articles in academic journals including China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China; and China Review; and chapters in numerous edited volumes. Professor Wedeman’s book Double Paradox was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of thirty “Best International Relations Books of 2012.” He has lectured on the book and recent developments in China’s “war on corruption” across the United States and in Canada, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as being interviewed by the New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Caixin, and other international media: testified before the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and addressed the 2014 Dow Jones Global Compliance Symposium on the issue of corruption in China. Professor Wedeman is current writing a book tentative entitled Slating Flies and Hunting Tigers: Xi Jinping’s War on Corruption.

Kenneth R. Weinstein is President and Chief Executive Officer of Hudson Institute. He joined the Institute in 1991, and was appointed CEO in June 2005. Weinstein was named President and CEO in March 2011. A political theorist by training whose academic work focuses on the early Enlightenment, Weinstein has written widely on international affairs for leading publications in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including Bungei Shunju (Japan), Le Figaro (France), Le Monde (France), The Wall Street Journal, and the Yomiuri Shimbun. He has been decorated with a knighthood in Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Weinstein is listed in Who’s Who in America, and serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Europe. He serves as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the oversight body for U.S. government civilian international media, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting. Weinstein previously served by presidential appointment and Senate confirmation on the National Humanities Council, the governing body of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a regular guest on radio and television, speaks French and German, and has been interviewed by major broadcast and cable outlets around the world. Weinstein, a frequent guest on French television and radio, has served as in-studio commentator for live French-language coverage of U.S. congressional and presidential elections since 1996. He is the co-editor, with Paul Aligica, of The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking (Lexington Books, 2009). Weinstein graduated from The University of Chicago (B.A. in General Studies in the Humanities), the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (D.E.A. in Soviet and Eastern European Studies), and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Government).

Michael Weiss is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, which was selected as The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, by Times of London as one of the Best Books of 2015 and by The Wall Street Journal as one of the Top Ten Books on Terrorism. It has been translated into over a dozen languages. He is also the coauthor of “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money,” a report which was published in 2014 at the height of the Russian-Ukraine War and has seen been described by one former president, NATO, European and U.S. officials as a benchmark work on analysis on Russian state propaganda and disinformation campaigns. He currently serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and a member of the Advisory Council of Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative. Prior to joining CNN as a National Security Analyst, he served as a Contributor to the network for two years, appearing regularly on Anderson Cooper 360, Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, and New Day to discuss ISIS-related terror attacks in the West.  He was a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and editor-in-chief of The Interpreter, an online magazine that translated and analyzed Russian-language news into English, including two major studies about runaway corruption in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, one by former Russian deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, the other by Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. The Interpreter also broke news about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine and about the use of Russian artillery systems in the conflict. Weiss has reported from multiple countries. In 2012, he embedded with anti-government forces and documented the fall of the Syrian city of Aleppo for Foreign Affairs. In 2015, just prior to the Paris attacks, he traveled to Istanbul to profile a former ISIS spy in for The Daily Beast, where Weiss was a senior editor. “Confessions of an ISIS Spy” ran as a four-part series which was one of the publication’s most-read stories for that year. A half-hour interview Weiss gave to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs about the rise of ISIS and U.S. foreign policy, which was aired on the “Global Ethics Forum” on PBS stations throughout the United States in 2015, won a Bronze Telly Award. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2002 with a BA in History.

Margaret Whitehead is a Board Member of Hudson Institute. She holds a Ph.D. and M. Phil. in American Studies with an emphasis in cultural history from George Washington University, and has also pursued graduate studies at the University of California Los Angeles. In her dissertation, The Making of the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Canon, she asserts  the Museum’s promotion of specific photographers and photographs from 1937 to 1988 as yielding a canon in museum and art commerce that cast the Museum as an arbiter of the modern in America throughout most of the twentieth century. Earlier, Whitehead served in the Office of Programs for First Lady Barbara Bush and as a politically appointed and awarded Congressional Liaison in the Office of Secretary of Labor in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations. In addition to serving on the Board of the National Cancer Research Foundation of America, Whitehead has participated in advocacy and fundraising for numerous other national and local educational, medical, and faith-based organizations including Stephen Wise Temple Los Angeles, All Saints Episcopal Church Beverly Hills, Potomac School, and Princeton University. She was a founder of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the major preservation and advocacy group for historic architectural and cultural resources in Los Angeles County.

Ilya Zaslavskiy is a Research Expert, Free Russia Foundation (FRF), and an Academy Associate, Chatham House. He writes on Eurasian energy and kleptocracy for FRF, Hudson Institute, Atlantic Council, Martens Centre and other U.S. and EU think tanks. Previously he was Senior Visiting Fellow, Legatum Institute, and Bosch Fellow, Chatham House. He heads Free Speech, LLC which runs a project on the export of corrosive practices from post-Soviet states to the West. Besides academic work, Ilya provides consultancy services for Western energy firms, analyzing regulatory risks in developing countries. He holds an M.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford and an Executive Master in Management of Energy from BI Norwegian Business School.

Remembering Professor Karen Dawisha (1949-2018): Professor Dawisha was author of Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? which exposed the Russian leader’s criminal origins and corrupt regime, contributing to a major shift in U.S. policy towards the Kremlin. She was instrumental in establishing the Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson Institute and a founding member of its Advisory Council. She was a professor in the Department of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and the co-founder and director of its Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. She served as an advisor to the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and as an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Until the summer of 2000 she was a Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and had served as the Director of its Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies. She was a member of the Policy Planning Staff and the Bureau of Political Military Affairs of the U.S. State Department from 1985-1987. She had extensive overseas experience, living abroad from 1969-1983 in England, 1990-1991 in Egypt, and having done more than two dozen research trips to Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, as well as with extensive travel to Europe and the Middle East. She graduated with honors in Russian and Political Science from the University of Lancaster in England and received her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.