Panel IV Biographies

MODERATOR: Robert S. Litwak, Ph.D.

Director of the Division of International Security Studies
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Dr. Robert Litwak is director of the Division of International Security Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars within the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Litwak is the author or editor of many books, including Détente and the Nixon Doctrine, Security in the Persian Gulf, Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War, and Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy. In the mid-1990s, he served on the National Security Council staff at the White House as director for nonproliferation and export controls.

Litwak has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the United States Institute of Peace. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Litwak earned his doctorate in international relations from the London School of Economics.

Shahram Chubin, Ph.D.

Head of Academic Affairs, Director of Research
Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Dr. Shahram Chubin, a Swiss national, was born in Iran and educated in Great Britain and the United States. Before joining the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, he taught at the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva (1981–1996). He has been director of regional security studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Chubin has published widely in such journals as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Daedalus, and Survival. His recent publications include “Whither Iran? Reform, Domestic Policy and National Security” (London: IISS Adelphi Paper 342, 2002) and “Debating Iran’s Nuclear Aspiration” (with Rob Litwak), (The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2003.)

 

Bruce Hoffman, D.Phil.

Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency
The RAND Corporation

Dr. Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for nearly 30 years. He is currently the director of The RAND Corporation’s Washington, D.C. office and has served as acting director of RAND’s Center for Middle East Public Policy and as RAND’s vice president for external affairs. During spring 2004, Hoffman was a senior adviser on counterterrorism to the Office of National Security Affairs, Coalition Provisional Authority, in Baghdad. He has written books and articles on terrorism and testified before Congress on the subject. In recognition of his academic contributions to the study of political violence, the Queen Sofia Center for the Study of Violence in Valencia, Spain, awarded Hoffman the first Santiago Grisolía Prize and the accompanying Chair in Violence Studies, in June 1998. In 1994, he received the U.S. Intelligence Community Award Medallion, the highest award for a nongovernment employee.

Hoffman is a senior fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, and an adjunct professor in security studies at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He was the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He has served as an advisory board member and consultant on terrorism, political violence, and security for many government and nonprofit organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Hoffman received his D. Phil. in international relations from the University of Oxford in England.

Mitchell B. Reiss, D.Phil.

Vice Provost, College of William & Mary

Dr. Mitchell B. Reiss, vice provost for international affairs at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State from 2003 to 2005. He provided independent strategic advice and recommendations on American foreign policy to the secretary. He was also the president’s special envoy for the Northern Ireland Peace Process with the rank of ambassador, an assignment he continues to serve.

From 1999 to 2003, Reiss was dean of international affairs and director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies at William and Mary. He also held appointments at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law and in the Department of Government. Prior to William and Mary, Reiss helped manage the start up and operations of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, a multinational organization.

As a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., Reiss started its nonproliferation and counterproliferation programs. He has practiced corporate and banking law; was a special assistant to the national security advisor from 1988 to 1989; and served as a consultant to the Office of the Legal Advisor at the Department of State, the General Counsel’s Office at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories.

Reiss has a law degree from Columbia Law School and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He has written two books on international security, contributed chapters to 11 others, and has published more than 60 articles and reviews.