Panels and Speakers:  The conference featured two panel presentations:  The Current State of Democracy in the Middle East, and The Future of Democracy in the Middle East. Panel I The Current State of Democracy in the Middle East How far has democracy developed in different Arab countries since colonial times? Is there a trend towards more democracy in some countries vs. a complete stability of the current political system in others? Why? What differentiates those countries? Do citizens hold different views on democracy (e.g. what is it? do they have enough of it?) than their leaders? What is some evidence of that? To what extent has international education and the technological advances of media outlets (including satellite news channels and the Internet) contributed to the development of democracy so far? Panelists: Dr. Samer Shehata is a professor of Middle Eastern culture and politics at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, "the only academic institution in the United States devoted solely to the study of the modern Arab world." He has also taught at Columbia University, at the American University in Cairo, and was the Director of Graduate Studies at New York University's Center for Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Shehata's research interests include Middle East politics, U.S. foreign policy, social class and inequality; labor; globalization and its impact on the Arab world and developing countries; "development"; ethnography and the Hajj. He has been interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, and PBS, and has written been published in Salon.com, Slate Magazine, and USA Today. Dr. Sari Nusseibeh is the President of Al-Quds University, the Arab University of Jerusalem, and the former PLO representative in Jerusalem. An award-winning professor of philosophy, Dr. Nusseibeh is an expert on Palestinian democratic reform and has focused much of his recent work on the moral and functional limitations of the use of force/violence as a means to achieve or oppose political objectives. Dr. Nusseibeh has long been an advocate of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In 2003, he colaunched The People's Voice, a nonpartisan civil initiative to mobilize grassroots support for a two-state solution, with former Israeli security Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon. The initiative has thus far been signed by almost 400,000 Pale stinians and Israelis. Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and nonresident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Insitution. He has served as Advisor to the US Mission to the UN, as advisor to former Congressman Lee Hamilton, and as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which was mandated by the Wye River Agreements. He has contributed to The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and appears regularly on national and international radio and television. He has served on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for teh Arab and Muslim World, and co-drafted the report of their findings, "Changing Minds, Winning Peace. He also co-drafted several Council on Foreign Relations reports on US public diplomacy, on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and on Persian Gulf security. His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East (Westview Press, 2003; updated version, 2004) was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. TOP Panel II:  The Future of Democracy in the Middle East Are current trends in Arab societies helping or hurting the development of democratic governments there? To what extent are religiosity and democracy compatible? Can democracy and Islam co-exist? To what extent are international education and the technological advances of media outlets (including satellite news channels and the Internet) contributing to the development of democracy? What is likely to happen in the political environment of the region over the next 5-10 years? How will events in the US and other influential countries impact the region? Panelists: Dr. Jon Alterman is the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which aims to identify and understand the drivers of social and political change in the Middle East, concentrating on issues such as information and communications technologies, demographics, and the regional media. Previously, Dr. Alterman had served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Dr. Alterman, whose opinion pieces appear frequently in such publications as Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Asharq al-Awsat, taught at Harvard from 1993 to 1997, where he received his Ph.D. in history. Dr. Deina Abdelkader is a highly-accomplish scholar focusing on social justice and modernity in Islam. Recently induced into the The Islamic Jurisprudential Council of North America, Dr. Abdelkader has long been a member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, the Middle East Studies Association, and the American Academy of Religion, among others. She has been an Assistant Professor at Cairo University and a Lecturer and Faculty Member at Tufts University. Dr. Abdelkader writes and gives talks regularly on issues of law, government, modernity, globalization, and gender in Islam. Dr. Radwan Masmoudi is the President of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, a Washington-based non-profit think tank. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Center's quarterly publication, Muslim Democrat. Dr. Masmoudi, who has a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in robotics, automation, and control, was born in Tunisia in 1963 and immigrated to the United States in 1981. He has written and published several papers on the topics of democracy, diversity, human rights, and tolerance in Islam. He is very active with local Muslim organizations, and was elected as Director of the Muslim Community Center, in Silver Spring, Maryland. TOP