A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Dr. Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown.

Ambassador Oren has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books, Six Days of War: June 1967 and The Making of the Modern Middle East and Power, Faith, and Fantasy:  America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, were both New York Times bestsellers. They won the Los Angeles Times’ History Book of the Year prize, a National Council of the Humanities Award, and the National Jewish Book Award.

Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the recent Gaza operation.  He acted as an Israeli emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations, and as the government’s director of Inter-Religious Affairs. He has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs.

Ambassador Oren is married to Sally, and they have three children—Yoav, Lia, and Noam.

Audio Synopsis:

Ambassador Oren begins by tracing the history of the US-Israel relationship, which he spent several decades researching as a historian prior to being appointed Ambassador. He notes that the United States and Israel have long maintained a spiritual and democratic connection, augmented in 1967 by a strategic/military relationship following the Six Days War.

Ambassador Oren was appointed in July 2009, six months in to the Obama administration. He cites three initial areas of disagreement between the current Israeli and American administrations: strategies for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons; settlement freezes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and the logistics of a two-state solution. Oren feels that these points of disjuncture have largely been overcome through close cooperation and an ongoing dialogue.  Agreements have been reached, for example, on the removal of roadblocks and checkpoints, a ten-month moratorium on West Bank construction, and the imposition of sanctions on Iran.

In conclusion, Ambassador Oren offers an optimistic outlook for the future of U.S.-Israel relations, pointing out Israel's close economic and trade partnership with the United States in addition to its strategic and ideological partnerships. He asserts that the idea of America is indivisible from the idea of a recreated Jewish state.

A question and answer session addressed such topics as the likelihood of success of sanctions against Iran; what alternatives are available if sanctions fail; whether Medvedev's administration has been more willing to engage with Israel than was Putin's administration; how problems with the Palestinian education system are being addressed by Israel; and how an independent, demilitarized Palestine might change Israel's relationship with other Middle Eastern countries.

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum

Taking a contemporary policy-focused approach, this presentation will focus on the changes in Turkey's neighborhood and the concomitant transformation of Turkey's foreign policy since the demise of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the competition for the energy resources in the Caspian region. How and under which conditions can Turkey's transatlantic obligations, EU membership objectives, and regional aspirations can be reconciled?

Ahmet Evin is Professor of Political Science and the founding dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey). He received his Ph.D. in Middle East Studies and Cultural History from Columbia University. He has taught at New York University, Harvard University, Hacettepe University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Hamburg, Bilkent University and Sabanci University. His research interests include theories of the State and elites; Turkish political development; and democracy and civil society. Prof. Evin currently works on current foreign policy issues related to the European enlargement, its significance for Turkey and the region as well as its effect on Transatlantic relations. Prof. Evin has initiated, with the European Commission's support, a policy dialogue on the future European architecture, EU's eastward expansion, its Mediterranean policy, and the customs union agreement with Turkey. Among his publications are "Turkish foreign policy: limits of engagement" (New Perspectives on Turkey, 2009), "The Future of Greek-Turkish relations" (Journal of Southeast European & Black Sea Studies, 2005), Towards Accession Negotiations: Turkey's Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges Ahead (2004), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (1998), State Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s (1988), Origins and Development of the Turkish Novel (1984), and Modern Turkish Architecture(1984).

Over the past eight years, Stanford students have contributed to holding war criminals accountable in trials held both inside the United States and abroad.  Learn how research by students can help to change and/or enforce international law, shape historic memory, and contribute to the construction of the rule of law -- bit by bit.  This forum explores student participation in what is called the "Jesuit Massacre." In 2009, the Spanish National Court formally charged former Salvadoran President Alfredo Christiani Burkard and 14 former military officers for their role in the murder of six Spanish Jesuit priests, their Salvadoran housekeeper and her 16 year-old daughter in November 1989. The Court has called these murders crimes against humanity and state terrorism. In November, Political Science Professor Terry Karl, aided by a team of students, presented extensive evidence to the Spanish Court. The students will talk about their work and what it means

Combating militant violence-particularly within South Asia and the Middle East-stands at the top of the international security agenda. Despite the extensive literature on the determinants of political attitudes, little is known about who supports militant organizations and why. To address this gap we conducted a 6000-person, nationally-representative survey of Pakistanis that measures affect towards four important militant organizations. We apply a novel measurement strategy to mitigate social desirability bias and item non-response, which plagued previous surveys due to the sensitive nature of militancy. Our study reveals key patterns of support for militancy. First, Pakistanis exhibit negative affect toward all four militant organizations, with those from areas where groups have been most active disliking them the most. Second, personal religiosity does not predict support, although views about what constitutes jihad do. Third, wealthy Pakistanis and those who support core democratic rights are more supportive of militant organizations than others. Longstanding arguments tying support for violent political organizations to individuals' economic prospects or attitudes towards democracy-and the subsequent policy recommendations-may require substantial revision.

Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His primary research interests are the organizational aspects of terrorism, insurgency, and security policy. Shapiro’s ongoing projects study the causes of support for militancy in Islamic countries and the relationship between aid and political violence. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Military Operations Research, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. He is a member of the editorial board of World Politics, is a former Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy, and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Jon Krosnick received a B.A. degree in psychology from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in social psychology from the University of Michigan.

Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2004, Dr. Krosnick was professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University, where he was a member of the OSU Political Psychology Program and co-directed the OSU Summer Institute in Political Psychology.

He has taught courses on survey methodology around the world at universities, for corporations, and for government agencies, including at IBM, Pfizer, the National Opinion Research Center, RTI International, the White House Office of Management and Budget, Total Research Corporation, the American Society of Trial Consultants, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Office for National Statistics, London, UK, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Johannesburg, the Australian Market and Social Research Society's Professional Development Program, and ZUMA (in Mannheim, Germany). He has provided expert testimony in court and has served as an on-air election-night television commentator.

Dr. Krosnick has served as a consultant to such organizations as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the CBS Office of Social Research, ABC News, the National Institutes of Health, Home Box Office, NASA, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute, and Google.

From 2005 through 2009, he is Principal Investigator of the American National Election Studies.