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Leaders In International Higher Education
2008 Annual Conference Speakers
Ambassador Alfonso Quiñónez
Mira Kamdar
Rami Khouri
Peter McPherson
Lori Wallach
Ambassador Alfonso Quiñónez is the Executive Secretary for Integral Development and Director General of the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development of the OAS. Previously, he held the position of Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary General. Prior to that position, he was the Director ofthe Office of Policies and Programs for Development of the OAS Executive Secretariat for Integral Development. During the period between May, 2004 and January, 2005, he was Acting Executive Secretary for Integral Development and Acting Director General of the Inter-American Agency for Integral Development. He joined the OAS in July, 2001 as Director of the Department of Cooperation Policies. Previously he served as Executive Director of the Alvaro Arzú Foundation for Peace in Guatemala and as Advisor to the Mayor of Guatemala City. During ten years, Ambassador Quiñónez was a member of the Guatemalan Foreign Service, having held the positions of Counselor in Spain, Minister Counselor in the United States, and from January, 1998 through April, 2000, Ambassador, Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States. Ambassador Quiñónez is an attorney and notary public graduated from Francisco Marroquín University of Guatemala and holds a masters degree in Common Law Studies from Georgetown University. He was a fellow at the School of Public Affairs of the University of Maryland, studying United States Foreign Policy Making. He attended the Inter-American Defense College, having been the first Guatemalan civilian that participated in such course. During 2002 and 2001, he was a professor in the Schools of Law and International Relations of the Francisco Marroquin University in his native Guatemala.
Mira Kamdar, an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society, was a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute from 1992 to 2006. She founded the Institute's program on Emerging Powers: China , India , Brazil and South Africa , and was a founding member of the program on Citizenship & Security. She served as Acting Director in 1996-97.
Kamdar is the author of Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World 
(Scribner 2007). Her critically acclaimed memoir, Motiba's Tattoos: A Granddaughter's Journey from America into her Indian Family's Past 
(Public Affairs 2000; Plume 2001) was a 2000 Barnes & Noble
Discover Great New Writers Selection and won the 2002 Washington Book
Award. Kamdar was a core member of the Pacific Council and the Observer
Research Foundation's bilateral U.S.-India task force, and was one of
the principle authors of the task force's ground-breaking 2005 report
India-US Relations: A Vision for the Future. She is a contributing
author to the four-volume Encyclopedia of India (Thompson Gale 2007),
edited by eminent historian of India Stanley Wolpert, writing the entry
on "Contemporary Culture in the U.S.-India Relationship."
Mira Kamdar's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Times of India, Daily News & Analysis, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, World Policy Journal, Seminar, Tehelka and American Theatre magazine , and she has provided expert commentary and been interviewed for radio and television outlets as diverse as CNN International, the BBC, TV Ontario, Public Radio International, Headlines Today, South Asia World, and TV Asia.
Kamdar is a member of the editorial boards of World Policy Journal and India Review . She is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and of the South Asian Journalists Association, and is a regular speaker at high-level international gatherings.
Mira Kamdar was born in Seattle , Washington . She received her BA from Reed College (Phi Beta Kappa), and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley . She was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in 1980 and a Danforth Graduate Fellow in 1981-85. She has lived in France , Japan , South Korea and India , and is fluent in French and Hindi. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
Kamdar is represented by Sterling Lord, Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc
Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. His journalistic work includes writing books and an internationally syndicated column, and he also serves as editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
He spent the 2001–2002 academic year as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and was appointed a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a research associate at the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University (NY, USA), a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum.=
He was executive editor of the Daily Star newspaper in 2003–2005, and before that had been editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years, when he also wrote for many years from Amman, Jordan for leading international publications, including the Financial Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. For 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, and in recent years served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archaeology, history, and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan. He often comments on Mideast issues in the international media and lectures frequently at conferences and universities throughout the world. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University
Peter McPherson
serves as president of the National Association of State Universities
and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and is President-Emeritus of Michigan
State University. He is the founding co-chair of the Partnership to Cut
Hunger and Poverty in Africa, and chairs the board of Abraham Lincoln
Study Abroad Commission, and is Chairman of the Board of the
International Food and Agricultural Development.
McPherson served as President for Michigan State University for 11
years. Before his appointment as President of Michigan State
University, McPherson worked at the Bank of America for five years a
Group Executive Vice President.
From August 1987 until March 1989, McPherson held the position of
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department where he focused on trade,
tax, and international issues. McPherson was one of three negotiators
for Canadian Free Trade Agreement in final weeks and served as a member
of the Farm Credit Assistance Board and the Board of the Federal
Financing Bank.
As an Administrator of the Agency for International Development from
February 1981 until August 1987, McPherson was responsible for USAID
missions in 70 countries, a staff of 5,000 and a budget of about $6
billion a year. During his tenure as Administrator, McPherson was in
charge of the U.S. response to the Great Famine in Africa in 1984 -
1985 where USAID delivered more than two million tons of food to Africa
over a 12-month period.
During the same period, McPherson served as Chairman of the Board of
the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. McPherson's previous
government and private experience includes Washington managing partner
of the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymore and Pease; Special Assistant to
President Ford; and Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru. Among the business
boards, McPherson serves on the Board of Directors of Dow Jones and
Company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal as well as others.
Lori Wallach is Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division. Public Citizen, founded in 1971, is a nonprofit citizen research, lobbying and litigation group based in Washington , D.C. Launched by Wallach in 1995, Global Trade Watch is a leader in the global citizen movement for fair trade and investment policy. Working closely with civil society, scholars, and activists in developing countries and with U.S. congressional, environmental, labor, and other allies, Wallach has played an important role in fostering the growing debate about implications of different models of globalization on jobs, livelihoods and wages; the environment; public health and safety; equality and social justice and democratically accountable governance.
A Harvard-trained lawyer, Wallach has promoted the public interest regarding globalization and international commercial agreements in every forum: Congress and foreign parliaments, the courts, government agencies, and the media. Described as "Ralph Nader with a sense of humor" in a Wall Street Journal profile, "the Trade Debate's Guerrilla Warrior" in the National Journal , and "Madame Defarge of Seattle" by the Institute for International Economics, Wallach has testified on NAFTA, GATT-WTO, and other trade issues before over 20 U.S. congressional committees, numerous other countries' legislatures, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Global Trade Watch serves as a hub for an international network of citizen groups working on globalization issues. Wallach's work in "translating" arcane trade legalese - indeed, entire proposed international commercial agreements - into relevant, accessible prose has had significant national and international impact.
Wallach and Global Trade Watch have been U.S. leaders in successful fights against proposed "Fast Track" legislation in 1997 and 1998 and, working with international partners, the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the proposed "Millennium Round" of WTO negotiations at the 1999 Seattle WTO Ministerial, the proposed WTO expansion at the 2003 Cancun WTO Ministerial and the derailing of the proposed FTAA hemispheric NAFTA expansion. Global Trade Watch's leadership in the campaign against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) NAFTA expansion contributed to creating a U.S. debate over that economically modest pact that required two-years, the U.S. President's continued personal intervention and a major corporate campaign to eek out a one-vote margin of passage. CAFTA specifically and trade generally proved a prominent political issue in the U.S. midterm 2006 elections with more than 100 candidates for House, Senate and Governor campaigning on "fair trade." Current projects include efforts to stop NAFTA expansions to Peru , Colombia and Panama , as well as replace the 'Fast Track' trade negotiating process with a new mechanism that restores Congress' constitutional authority in trade policy-making and empowers more diverse participation. Other projects include empowering state legislators in numerous states to enact new procedures and policies which provide them a voice in international 'trade' negotiations which affect their authority and work with a global network on the WTO and especially WTO service sector privatization and deregulation negotiations.
Wallach has served as a trade commentator on CNN, ABC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and regularly appears on such programs as All Things Considered and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Wallach's most recent book is Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (The New Press, 2004). She has also contributed to numerous anthologies including Alternatives to Economic Globalization : A Better World Is Possible.
Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition of consumer, labor, environmental, family farm, religious, and civil rights groups representing over 11 million Americans, and now serves on its board. She also is a founding board member of the International Forum on Globalization, on whose board she also serves.