Gordon Brown
Washington, DC
Gordon Brown is an author and retired diplomat. During his over thirty-five year Foreign Service career focused on the Middle East, Brown served in a variety of senior management positions. Ambassador to Mauritania from 1991 to 1994, Brown had previously served as political advisor to General Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War. Earlier, he had been the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis (1986-1989), and Director of the Office of Arab Peninsula Affairs in the Department of State (1984-1986.) Still earlier overseas assignments included Lebanon (1962-63), Iraq (1963-66), Egypt (1966-69), Paris (1973-76), and Saudi Arabia (1976-78). In the Department of State he served, in addition to several tours of duty in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, as Director of Maritime Affairs (1982-84), Director of U.N. Economic Affairs (1980-82), Deputy Director of the Office of International Commodities (1979-80) and in the Office of Fuels and Energy (1971-73). On retirement from the diplomatic service in 1996, he helped to establish and was president of the U.S. – Qatar Business Council. Brown graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1957 and served three years in the Army before joining the Foreign Service.
Stephen Kinzer
New York
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning correspondent who has reported from more than 50 countries on four continents. He is also a professor of journalism and international relations at Northwestern University. During the late 1990s, Mr. Kinzer was the first New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul. He traveled widely in Turkey and in the new nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia, from Azerbaijan to Uzbekistan. Before his arrival in Istanbul, Mr. Kinzer spent six years in Germany as chief of the New York Times bureaus in Bonn and Berlin. From 1983 to 1989 Mr. Kinzer was the first Times bureau chief in Managua, Nicaragua. Mr. Kinzer joined The New York Times in 1983 and was on its staff for more than 20 years. He came to the Times from the Boston Globe, where he was Latin America correspondent. Before joining the Globe he had been a newspaper columnist, an adjunct professor of journalism at Boston University, and a state government official in Massachusetts. He studied history at Boston University and graduated with high honors.
Roberts B. Owen
Washington, DC
Roberts B. Owen is a retired senior council in the litigation, arbitration and mediation practices. As a former legal Advisor of the U.S. Department of State, he has been a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Hague) He has also served as senior advisory to the Secretary of State for the former Yugoslavia, the President of the International Court of Justice, chief U.S. negotiator in the then-current Pacific Salmon dispute with Canada, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Advisory Committee, vice president and director of American Friends of Cambridge University, and Vice Chair and chief judge of the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts. He was awarded the Distinguished Honor award, U.S. Department of State, The Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, and the Distinguished Service Award, U.S. Department of State. Mr. Owens received a BA from Harvard College, an LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and a Dip. C.L.S. from Cambridge University.
Linda Singer
Washington, DC
Linda R. Singer, Esq. has been a leader in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution for more than 30 years, as a mediator, arbitrator, lawyer, teacher, and author. Ms. Singer's experience resolving disputes encompasses a wide variety of substantive areas including business disputes within corporations and partnerships, employment disputes in businesses, government agencies, and law firms, environmental disputes, civil rights disputes, catastrophic personal injury, insurance disputes, and ADR systems design, training, and implementation. She joined JAMS, the nation’s largest private provider of Alternative Dispute Resolution services, in 2004. She has mediated, arbitrated, and facilitated disputes in a variety of business, legal, technical, insurance, interpersonal, and public policy contexts. She also has served as a federal district court special master. She holds a BA from Harvard University and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School.
Omer Taspinar
Washington, DC – Chair
Dr. Omer Taspinar is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Turkey Project. He is also a professor at the National War College and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Taspinar is an expert on Turkey, the European Union, Muslims in Europe, political Islam, the Middle East, and Kurdish nationalism. He has authored two books: Political Islam and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey andFighting Radicalism with Human Development: Freedom, Education and Growth in the Islamic World. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and his B.A. from Middle East Technical University.
