Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) Podcasts

Ambassador Colin Keating is the Executive Director of Security Council Report which produces regular reports on the work of the United Nations Security Council. He is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University. Ambassador Keating was formerly a New Zealand diplomat. He was the New Zealand Ambassador to the UN between 1993 and 1996 and served on the Security Council in 1993 and 1994. He was Council president during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and led the Council Mission to Somalia. Also, he chaired the Security Council Committee on Sanctions against Iraq and was actively involved in UN reform, serving as Co-Chair of the General Assembly working group dealing with reform at that time.

(In French) Aurélie Campana is a professor of Political Science at Laval University and has held the Canada Research Chair in identity conflicts and terrorism since June 2007. Her presentation focuses on patterns of violence and conflict in the North Caucasus.

Ms. Biggs is President of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Her presentation addresses the challenges and hopes for development in a changing world.

David Carment is Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, and Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. In addition Professor Carment serves as the principal investigator for the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project. Yiagadeesen (Teddy) Samy is Associate Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University.

Frances Wood is the Head of Climate Security in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). She leads a small team in London and a network of attaches to broaden and deepen the debate globally on the security implications of climate change. The issue for the UK is in two main parts - limiting the threats to security by addressing the underlying cause - GHG emissions - and by planning for the security implications stemming from the climate impacts already committed to.

Brigadier General Jonathan Vance, former Canadian commander in Kandahar, recently returned from Afghanistan where he served as Commander of Canadian and NATO Forces in Kandahar Province from February to November 2009.

Bruce Riedel is a Senior Fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He retired in 2006 after 30 years service at the Central Intelligence Agency, including postings overseas. He was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last three Presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council at the White House. He was a negotiator at several Arab-Israeli peace summits including at Camp David and Wye River. He was also Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Near East and South Asia at the Pentagon and a senior advisor at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels. In January 2009 President Barack Obama asked him to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author of The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future published by Brookings Press.

Professor Legro has written extensively on American foreign policy, international cooperation and conflict, China’s future in world politics, international norms and law, military doctrine and strategy, and the causes of foreign policy ideas and national identity. His most recent book is Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order (2005).

(In French) Professor Manirakiza joined the Faculty of Law in 2003. He is an expert in international criminal and humanitarian law and has written widely on these subjects

Mr. Dobbins' talk will be based on his newly published book, After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan, which won the 2008 Douglas Dillon Award for Distinguished Writing on American Diplomacy.

One of Canada's most astute political observers, John Ibbitson became the Globe's Washington correspondent in May 2007. He is the author of several books of political analysis, including Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution (1997), Loyal No More: Ontario's Struggle for a Separate Destiny (2001) and The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream (2005), along with works of fiction and poetry.

Graeme Smith has devoted more time to southern Afghanistan than any other Western journalist, since the arrival of NATO forces in that region. Hired by The Globe and Mail in 2001, the war in southern Afghanistan became his full-time project in mid-2006.

(In English and French) Matthew Paterson is the author of Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (2007), Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance (2000), Energy Exporters and Climate Change (with Peter Kassler, 1997) and Global Warming and Global Politics (1996).

Professor Kupchan was Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration.

Before she became the Chairperson of the AIHRC, Dr. Samar served as Afghanistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women's Affairs.She has received numerous international awards for her work on human and women's rights, and was listed as one of the "world's 100 most powerful women" by Forbes Magazine in 2007.