Andrew Kuchins is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program. From 2000 to 2006, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he was director of its Russian and Eurasian Program in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2003 and again in 2006, and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center in Russia from 2003 to 2005. Kuchins conducts research and writes widely on Russian foreign and security policy. He is working on a book titled China and Russia: Strategic Partners, Allies, or Competitors, and coedited, with Dmitri Trenin, Russia: The Next Ten Years (Carnegie, 2004).

Kuchins has taught at Georgetown University and Stanford University. From 1997 to 2000, he was associate director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also served as a senior program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1993 to 1997, where he developed and managed a grant-making program to support scientists and researchers in the former Soviet Union. From 1989 to 1993, he was executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford Program on Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.

He is a member of the editorial boards of Pro et Contra and Demokratizatsia and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2000. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

Jeremy Weinstein is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he directed the bi-partisan Commission on Weak States and US National Security. While working on his PhD, with funding from the Jacob Javits Fellowship, a Sheldon Fellowship, and the World Bank, he conducted hundreds of interviews with rebel combatants and civilians in both Africa and Latin America for his forthcoming book, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. He has also worked on the National Security Council staff; served as a visiting scholar at the World Bank; was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and received a research fellowship in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He received his BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and his MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

Jared Genser is an attorney in the global government relations group of DLA Piper US LLP in Washington, D.C. and President of Freedom Now (www.freedom-now.org), a non-profit organization that works to free prisoners of conscience worldwide through legal, political, and public relations advocacy efforts. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in Winter 2008 will be an Adjunct Professor Law at the University of Michigan Law School teaching a seminar entitled "The UN Security Council in the 21st Century: Operations, Impact, and Reform." Genser was a 2006-2007 Visiting Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy. His human rights clients have included former Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi, Desmond Tutu, and Elie Wiesel. Previously, Genser was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, the global strategy consulting firm. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University, a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he was an Alumni Public Service Fellow, and a J.D., cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. He has published op-eds on human rights topics in such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Asia, International Herald Tribune, The Nation (Bangkok), The Independent (UK), and The Star (Johannesburg), among others.

John M. Owen, IV, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell, 1997), as well as of articles in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, The National Interest, and Perspectives on Politics, and of chapters in several edited volumes. He is a member of the editorial board of International Security. Owen is currently completing a book manuscript titled Clashes of Ideas in World Politics: Ideologies, Alignments, and Regime Change, 1500-2000. He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University and an MPA from Princeton University, is a faculty fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and has held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Oxford universities.

What are the underpinnings of India's vibrant technology sector? Dr. Dossani will look at the causes and prospects of the sector, including the role of the diaspora, education, familiarity with the English language, entrepreneurship and economic and political reforms.

Rafiq Dossani is a senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC, responsible for developing and directing the South Asia Initiative. His research interests include South Asian security, and financial, technology, and energy-sector reform in India. He is currently undertaking projects on political reform, business process outsourcing, innovation and entrepreneurship in information technology in India, and security in the Indian subcontinent.

Dossani holds a BA in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a PhD in finance from Northwestern University.

His latest book, India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business, will be available at the seminar.