Forum Agenda and Participant Biographies - Brookings Institution

david Ignatius
UnIted StateS
David Ignatius is an award-winning
columnist for the Washington
Post, writing on foreign affairs
twice weekly for the paper and
contributing to the PostPartisan
blog. Ignatius joined the Post
in 1986 as Editor of the Outlook section, and then
served as Foreign Editor from 1990-92. Ignatius was
named Assistant Managing Editor in charge of business
news in 1993. He continued to write columns
weekly after becoming Executive Editor of the International
Herald Tribune in 2000, and resumed writing
twice a week for the op-ed page in 2003. Before joining
the Post, he worked for ten years as a Reporter for
the Wall Street Journal, covering at various times the
steel industry, the Justice Department, the CIA, the
U.S. Senate, the Middle East, and the State Department.
Ignatius has also written seven novels.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu
tURkey
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu is the
Secretary-General of the Organization
of the Islamic Conference
(OIC). Ihsanoglu has been
with the OIC since 1980, first as
founding Director General of the
Research Centre for Islamic History, Culture and Arts
(IRCICA) in Istanbul. He was the founding Head
of the Department of History of Science of Istanbul
University, as well as the founding Chairman of the
Turkish Society for History of Science (TBTK) and
ISAR Foundation. He also served as the President of
the International Union of History and Philosophy
of Science (IUHPS) between 2001 and 2005. He has
written numerous books, articles, and papers in Turkish,
English, and Arabic on science, history of science,
Islamic culture, Turkish culture, relations between the
Muslim world and the Western world, and Turkish-
Arab relations. He received his B.S. at Ain Shams University
in 1966 and a master’s degree in Chemistry in
1970. After completing his Ph.D. studies at Ankara
University, he did his post-doctoral research at the
University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
2011 U.S.-ISLAMIC WORLD FORUM
Y e A R OF ChAnge
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Martin Indyk
UnIted StateS
Martin Indyk is Vice President and
Director of Foreign Policy Studies at
Brookings. He was also the founding
Director of the Saban Center
for Middle East Policy. Indyk served
as U.S. Ambassador to Israel from
1995 to 1997 and 2000 to 2001. Indyk was Special
Assistant to President William J. Clinton, and Senior
Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the
National Security Council. He served as Assistant Secretary
of State for Near East Affairs from 1997 to 2000.
Before entering the U.S. government, Indyk was founding
Executive Director of the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy. He currently serves as Chairman of the
International Council of the New Israel Fund. His recent
book, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of U.S. Peace
Diplomacy in the Middle East, was published in January
2009 in both Hebrew and English. More recently, Indyk
contributed to the book Which Path to Persia?: Options
for a New American Strategy toward Iran.
ahmad Iravani
IRan
Ahmad Iravani is the President
and Executive Director of the
Center for the Study of Islam and
the Middle East. For the past ten
years, Ayatollah Iravani has been
teaching at The Catholic University
of America (CUA) in Washington, DC. He was the
Dean of the School of Philosophy at Mofid University
in Qom, Iran before going to the United States. He
has also served as a senior advisor to the International
Center for Religion and Diplomacy in Washington,
DC. In addition to his academic activities, he participates
in several interfaith dialogues around the world.
Ayatollah Iravani has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the
Iranian Institute of Philosophy in Tehran and is currently
a Ph.D. candidate at the CUA.
adel Iskandar
UnIted StateS
Adel Iskandar is a scholar of Arab
studies whose research focuses on
media and communication. He is
the author and coauthor of many
works including Al-Jazeera: The