2007 Speakers:
Michael Beschloss
September 26, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America: 1789-1989"
Andrew Nagorski
October 3, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Russia, Past and Present: The Battle of Moscow and Today"
Paul Rusesabagina
October 18, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Hotel Rwanda: Lessons Still Not Yet Learned"
Robert Satloff
October 24, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab Lands"
Michael Beschloss
September 26, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America: 1789-1989"
Co-sponsors: Doherty, Wallace, Pillsbury and Murphy, P.C. and the Young President's Organization
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Michael Beschloss is an award-winning historian and the author of eight books, including the recently published Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989. In the first review of Presidential Courage, Kirkus Reviews writes, "Engrossing . . . marvelous . . . and judicious . . . History written with subtlety, verve and an almost novelistic appreciation for the complexities of human nature and Presidential politics." First printing of Presidential Courage is 250,000, with an excerpt in Newsweek.
Newsweek has called Beschloss "the nation's leading Presidential historian." He serves as NBC News Presidential Historian--the first time any major network has created such a position--and appears regularly on Meet the Press, Today, and all NBC network programs. He is a regular on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2005, he won an Emmy for his role in creating the Discovery Channel series Decisions that Shook the World, of which he was the host.
Beschloss was born in Chicago in 1955. An alumnus of Williams College, he also has an advanced degree from the Harvard Business School. He has been an historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution (1982-1986), a Senior Associate Member at Oxford University in England (1986-1987), and a Senior Fellow of the Annenberg Foundation in Washington, D.C. (1988-1996).
Beschloss work has been recognized with the State of Illinois's Order of Lincoln and the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award from Independence, Missouri. He is a trustee of the White House Historical Association, the National Archives Foundation and the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their two sons.
Excerpts taken from: http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/SpeakerInfo/Bios/BeschlossMichael.doc
Andrew Nagorski
October 3, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Russia, Past and Present: The Battle of Moscow and Today"
Co-Sponsors: St. Germain Investment Management and the Phillips Lecture Fund
Note: Mr. Nagorski is replacing Robert Shrum's lecture.
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Andrew Nagorski is a senior editor at Newsweek International. An award-winning foreign correspondent who has reported from Warsaw, Rome, Hong Kong, Washington, Bonn and Berlin, he served two tours as Moscow bureau chief. After only fourteen months, his first tour was cut short in 1982 by the Soviet authorities. Angered by his enterprising reporting on a broad range of sensitive topics, they expelled him "for impermissible methods of journalistic activities." He served his second tour in the mid-1990s, and has visited Moscow regularly since then.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland of Polish parents, Nagorski grew up in the United States and abroad after his father joined the U.S. foreign service. A 1969 graduate of Amherst College, he taught high school social studies in Wayland, Massachusetts for three years before embarking on his journalistic career. Along with The Greatest Battle, he is the author of Reluctant Farewell: An American Reporter's Candid Look Inside the Soviet Union and The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe. His novel Last Stop Vienna was a Washington Post bestseller. Aside from Newsweek, he has written for numerous publications, including Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post and The New York Times. He and his wife Christina have four children.
Paul Rusesabagina
October 18, 2007 - 7:30 p.m..
"Hotel Rwanda: Lessons Still Not Yet Learned"
Sponsor: Merrie and Lyman Wood ____________________________________________
Ten years ago, the country of Rwanda descended into madness. Over the course of 100 days, almost one million people were killed in Rwanda. Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, made a promise to protect the family he loved from the genocide - and ended up finding the courage to shelter and ultimately save over 1200 people.
Rusesabagina was born June 15, 1954, at Murama-Gitarama in the Central-South of Rwanda; his parents were farmers. In 1962, he entered the SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) College of Gitwe, a Missionary School, and was there for seven years of primary school and six years of secondary studies.
From 1975 to 1978, Rusesabagina attended the Faculty of Theology in Cameroon and, in January 1979, was employed by Sabena as a front office manager in their newly opened Hotel Akagera in the Akagera National Park. It was at this time he learned about the Tourism, Hotel, and Catering Industry. Through The Suisse Tourist Consult, Rusesabagina's application was accepted for entrance into the Kenya Utalii College in Nairobi in the Hotel Management Course, which he started in early 1980 and finished in September 1984 in Switzerland.
Back from Switzerland, Rusesabagina joined Sabena Hotels again and was employed as assistant general manager in the Mille Collines Hotel from October 1984 until November 1992, at which time he was promoted to general manager of the Diplomate Hotel (also in Kigali).
For the 100 days of the genocide, Rusesabagina had to move back to the Mille Collines Hotel. His colleague Bik, manager of that unit, left Kigali on April 11, 1994, despite the number of refugees still left on their own. It was the next morning, when the government (Interim Government) left Kigali for Gitarama. Rusesabagina was there for almost the entire 100 days.
After the massacre, Rusesabagina went back to the Diplomate Hotel where he stayed until September 1996, after which he went to Belgium as a refugee. From that time to date, Rusesabagina has worked as a businessman in the transport industry while also running his Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation and speaking about his experience around the world.
Paul Rusesabagina's story has been told both in movie Hotel Rwanda, and is his autobiographyl, An Ordinary Man. Published on the 12th anniversary of the genocide in 2006, An Ordinary Man delves into Rusesabagina's personal journey while exploring the historical context of the conflict between Rwanda's Hutu and Tutsis tribes.
Rusesabagina has traveled the world with his message of hope, peace, and "never again." He has founded the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF) which provides support, care, and assistance to children orphaned by, and women abused during, the genocide in Rwanda. Lauded by many, he is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award. Rusesabagina, whose journey from hotel manager to humanitarian has been life-changing has said, "I've become a humanitarian and I never thought I would become one. And, as a humanitarian, I wanted to take this message on a wider scale, to raise awareness of what happened in my country so that the international community can help others who suffer now."
Robert Satloff
October 24, 2007 - 7:30 p.m.
"Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's
Long Reach Into Arab Lands"
Sponsor: United Bank
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Robert Satloff is the Executive Director of The Washington Institute for Near East Studies, a post he assumed in January 1993. An expert on Arab and Islamic politics as well as U.S. Middle East policy, Dr. Satloff has written and spoken widely on the Arab-Israeli peace process, the Islamist challenge to the growth of democracy in the region, and the need for bold and innovative public diplomacy to Arabs and Muslims.
Soon after September 11, Dr. Satloff and his family moved to Rabat, capital of Morocco, where he telecommuted to Washington as the Institute's director for policy and strategic planning, overseeing the organization's major programs and research projects. In addition, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe and wrote extensively on ways to inject urgency and ideas into the ideological campaign against radical Islamism, the topic of his collection of essays, The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East (The Washington Institute, 2004).
During his two years abroad, Dr. Satloff's personal research also focused on unearthing stories of Arab "heroes" and "villains" of the Holocaust, drawing on archives, interviews, and site visits in eleven countries. His discoveries, which helped convince the German government to award compensation to Jewish survivors of labor camps in North Africa , are the subject of his book, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories of the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (PublicAffairs, 2006).
The author or editor of nine books and monographs, Dr. Satloff's views on Middle East issues appear frequently in major newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and he regularly comments on major television network news programs, talk shows, and National Public Radio. In addition, Dr. Satloff is the creator and host of Dakhil Washington (Inside Washington), a weekly news and interview program on al-Hurra, the U.S. government-supported Arabic satellite television channel that beams throughout the Middle East and Europe . In that capacity, he is the only non-Arab to host a program on an Arab satellite channel.
Dr. Satloff graduated from St. Antony's College, University of Oxford (D.Phil.,); Harvard University (M.A.); Duke University (B.A.).