WITNESS BIOGRAPHIES

Jeffrey Feltman
 Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

Jeffrey Feltman was named Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon from August 2004 to January 2008.   He served  at the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Irbil, Iraq, in January-April 2004, and at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, where he served first as Deputy (August 2001-November 2002) and then as Acting Principal Officer (November 2002-December 2003).

Feltman joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1986, serving his first tour as consular officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  He has spent much of his career dealing with Eastern Europe and the Near East. He served in Embassy Tel Aviv as Ambassador Martin Indyk's Special Assistant on Peace Process issues (2000-2001).  In 1998-2000, Feltman served as Chief of the Political and Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia. He served in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1995 to 1998, covering economic issues in the Gaza Strip. Feltman studied Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman from 1994 to 1995. From 1991 to 1993, Feltman served in the office of Deputy Assistant Secretary Larry Eagleburger as a Special Assistant concentrating on the coordination of U.S. assistance to Eastern and Central Europe. Feltman served as an economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Hungary from 1988 to 1991.

Feltman received his undergraduate degree in history and fine arts from Ball State University in Indiana in 1981 and his Master's degree in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1983.

 

Barbara Slavin

Senior Diplomatic Reporter, USA Today

 

Barbara Slavin is the senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today (on temporary leave), and is currently Senior Fellow in the Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program, U.S. Institute for Peace, where her project focus is:  Iran Rising: Iran and its Clients in the Middle East. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

Slavin has travelled to Iran six times, and she was the first US newspaper reporter to interview President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

 

Slavin is responsible for analyzing foreign news and U.S. foreign policy. She has covered such key issues as the U.S. led war on terrorism, policy towards "rogue states", the reform movement in Iran, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. Slavin also covered the Iran-Iraq war and the 1991-93 Middle East peace talks in Washington.

 

Slavin was formerly a Washington-based writer for The Economist and Los Angeles Times; prior to that, she was the Middle East Correspondent based in Cairo for The Economist.  Slavin, also worked as a Tokyo correspondent for Newsday and The Economist and a Beijing correspondent for The Economist and Business Week.  She is a regular commentator on U.S foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, and C-Span.

 

Slavin is the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (St. Martin's Press, 2007).

 

She has a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Harvard University.

 

Suzanne Maloney

Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy

Saban Center for Middle East Policy

 

Suzanne Maloney studies Iran, the political economy of the Persian Gulf, and Middle East energy policy. Her expertise is Iran, the Gulf States, energy, and economic reform.

 

Maloney is a former policy advisor to the U.S. State Department where she was a Policy Planning Staff Member (2005-2007). Past positions include: Project Director, Task Force on U.S.-Iran Relations, Council on Foreign Relations (2003-2004); Middle East Advisor, ExxonMobil Corporation (2001-2004); Olin Fellow, The Brookings Institution (2000-2001); and Brookings Research Fellow, The Brookings Institution (1998-1999).

Maloney is the co-author of "Time to Start Talking to Tehran" (Newsweek, Dec. 19, 2007) and "Engage Iran" (Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Fall 2007), and author of "Fear and Loathing in Tehran" (The National Interest Sep./Oct. 2007), Ayatollah Gorbachev (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). She contributed to Iran: Time for a New Approach (Council on Foreign Relations, 2004).

 

She is responsible for the following briefs; Iran: Reality, Options, and Consequences (House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, Nov. 7, 2007) and America and Iran: From Containment to Coexistence (Policy Brief, Aug. 2001).

 

Maloney gained her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

 

Payam Akhavan

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law

McGill University

 

Payam Akhavan teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, international criminal law, and transitional justice, with a particular interest in human rights and multiculturalism, war crimes prosecutions, laws of war, law and society, Islam and the West, UN reform and the prevention of genocide. He has considerable experience in post-conflict peace building and foundational jurisprudence, and international dispute settlement.

 

Akhavan is co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, where he sits on the board of directors.  The Centre has published numerous reports: Community Under Siege: The Ordeal of the Baha'is of Shiraz (2007), Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination (2007), A Faith Denied: The Persecution of the Baha'is of Iran (2006), and Impunity in Iran: The Death of Photojournalist Zahra Kazemi (2006).

 

His work has been featured in The New York Times and, in recognition of his contributions promoting accountability for human rights violations, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2005.

 

Akhavan was previously a Boulton Senior Fellow at McGill, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Visiting Lecturer and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School and the Yale University Genocide Studies Program. Further positions include: the first Legal Advisor to the Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, The Hague (1994-2000); Special Advisor on International criminal law matters in Cambodia, Guatemala, and East Timor; Human Rights Officer, United nations Centre for Human Rights, Geneva & Zagreb/Sarajevo; Research Associate, Danish Institute of Human Rights, Copenhagen; and Research Associate, Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Oslo (1990-1991).

 

Akhavan has published extensively, including "Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?," American Journal of International Law, 2003; 95:7, and is the author of the Report on the Work of the Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide (2005).

 

Akhavan received his Bachelor of Law (LL.B.) from Osgoode Hall Law School and his Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) and his Master of Law (LL.M.) from Harvard University. He is a member of the New York State Bar.

 

Roya Boroumand

Co-founder and Executive Director, Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran

 

Boroumand is the co-founder and executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran (ABF), and she sits on the board of directors of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre.

 

Boroumand specializes in Iran's post-Second World War history, and she has co-authored several articles on the political situation in Iran and the nature of Islamist terrorism. She has also researched discrimination against women and children in Iran's penal and family code. Her current focus is on a human rights education project for Iran.

 

She is a former consultant with the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and has researched and written about women rights and family law in North Africa.

 

She is author of "Iran's Moment" in Open Democracy (April 4, 2005) and co-author of "Is Iran Democratizing? Reform at an Impasse" in Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (2003), "Illusion and Reality of Civil Society in Iran: An Ideological Debate" in a special issue on Iran since the Revolution in Social Research, Volume 67 No. 2 (Summer 2000), and "Terror, Islam, and Democracy", Journal of Democracy 13.2 (2002).

 

Boroumand has a Ph.D. in the history of international relations from the Sorbonne, France.

 

Paul Marshall

Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

 

Paul Marshall joined the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow in the Center for Religious Freedom in November 2006. For eight years prior to joining Hudson, he worked at Freedom House.  His areas of expertise are religion and politics, the Christian understanding of politics, and Islam and human rights.

Marshall held several professorships, including at the University of Toronto, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, where he taught political science, law, philosophy and theology.

He is the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, such as the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997) and,  more recently, Radical Islam's Rules: the Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt's Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven is not My Home (1998), and A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996). He is also the author of several hundred articles including: "Blasphemy, ‘Islamophobia,' and the Repression of Dissent," In Focus, Winter 2007 Edition, "Politics and Religion Do Mix" Washington Post, 01/14/2008; "Do They know It's Christmas? Not in Burma or Eritrea," The Weekly Standard, 12/31/2007; "Murder with Impunity: Iran targets the Baha'i - Again," The Weekly Standard, 11/05/2007; and "Muzzling in the Name of Islam," Washington Post, 09/29/2007.

Currently he is editing a book on religion and the media, producing a new world survey of religious freedom, and writing a book on blasphemy and apostasy. He holds a B.Sc. (Geology) from the University of Manchester, a M.Sc. (Geochemistry) from the University of Western Ontario, an M.Phil. (Philosophy) from the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. (Political Science) from York University, with further studies in international human rights law at the University of Strasbourg and theology at Oxford University.