Experts discuss the prospects for Mideast peace after the 2009 Gaza conflict

On Wednesday, Feb, 11, 2009, a forum took place on Gaza at Harvard Kennedy School's John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, moderated by Nicholas Burns, formerly the highest-ranking career diplomat at the U.S. State Department, Shai Feldman, who has been deeply involved in "track two" dialogues between Israelis and Palestinians, and Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.

R. Nicholas Burns is the Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Brother Fund, the Atlantic Council, the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress and the Appeal of the Conscience Foundation. In summer 2008, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C.  Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for 27 years until his retirement in April 2008. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008, the nation's highest-ranking career diplomat. In this position, he led negotiations on Iran, India, Kosovo, and many other issues and oversaw U.S. diplomatic efforts in each region of the world.  Prior to that, he was United States Ambassador to NATO from 2001 to 2005 and Ambassador to Greece from 1997 to 2001. During his career in the State Department, Burns was State Department Spokesman for Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher (1995-1997). He also served for five years (1990-1995) at the White House during the collapse of the Soviet Union where he was Special Assistant to the President for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs and a member of the National Security Council staff. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem in 1985-87, when he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank, and the American Embassies in Egypt and Mauritania. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Order of Saint John, and Red Sox Nation. Burns has a BA in History from Boston College (1978) where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He has an MA from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980). He also earned the Certificate Pratique de Langue Francaise at the Sorbonne in 1977.

Shai Feldman is the director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. From 1997-2005, he served as Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. He also serves on the council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and as a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. From 2001-2003, he served as a member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Feldman was a Senior Research Associate at the Jaffee Center since its establishment in late 1977. From 1984-1987, he was director of the Jaffee Center's Project on U.S. Foreign and Defense Policies in the Middle East and, from 1989-1994, he directed the Center's Project on Regional Security and Arms Control in the Middle East. In 1994, Feldman was a Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) at Harvard Univeristy's John F. Kennedy School of Government (1995-1997). Educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Feldman was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. Feldman is the author of numerous publications. These include: Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); The Future of U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation (Washington D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996); Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997); Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecture for the Middle East (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 with Abdullah Toukan (Jordan); and, Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East (Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 2003).

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies in the Department of History at Columbia University. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1970, and his Ph.D from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and Georgetown University. He taught at the University of Chicago for 16 years. He is past President of the Middle East Studies Association, and was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Khalidi is the author of Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006), which has been translated into French; Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), which has been translated in French, Italian and Spanish; Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997). co-winner of the Middle East Studies Association's Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997, which has been translated into French and Italian; Under Siege: PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War (1986), which has been translated into Arabic and Hebrew; and British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980); and is co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982) and The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991). He has written over ninety scholarly articles on aspects of Middle East history and politics, as well as op-ed pieces in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Nation. Dr. Khalidi has been a guest on numerous radio and TV shows including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and Nightline, and on the BBC, Radio France Inter, the CBC and the Voice of America.

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