Forum Network

Joseph Jankowski, Ph.D. is Case Western Reserve University Associate Vice President, Technology Management. He leads the commercialization efforts that stem from the $300+ million of annual research activity taking place at the university and its institutional affiliates. He is dedicated to Case Western Reserve University’s translational activities and holds leadership roles on the Coulter-Case Translation and Innovation Partnership, the Ohio BRCP Targeted Nanoparticles Center and the SOM High Throughput Screening Committee. In addition, Dr. Jankowski represents the university on the Outside Interests Committee, the Ohio Technology Transfer Officers’ Council, and the University Hospitals Case Medical Center Research Committee. He also serves on the boards of several Case Western Reserve University spinoff companies. In 2006, Dr. Jankowski joined the university faculty, teaching intellectual property commercialization and entrepreneurship in the schools of business, engineering, law and medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from SUNY College of Environmental Sciences, an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, and a B.S. in engineering technologies from the University of Dayton.

Hugo Hamilton is the author of The Speckled People, a unique, best-selling memoir of growing up in Dublin with a German mother and a fervent Irish nationalist father. It was hailed as “an instant classic” by Colum McCann and went on to win numerous prizes including the Prix Femina etranger in France. His second memoir The Sailor in the Wardrobe continues the emerging account of his confused identity and the attempted escape from the language war in which he was trapped as a child. Described by Hermione Lee as “an Irish novelist of great delicacy, originality and thoughtfulness,” he is the author of two memoirs, seven novels and a collection of short stories. His novel Disguise pursues the confusion of identity in the life of a Berlin musician who is convinced that he is a Jewish orphan and replaced a German boy who died in the bombing of the city. His latest novel Hand in the Fire (4th Estate) picks up that uneasy trespassing from one culture into another by looking at Ireland through the fresh perspective of a Serbian immigrant who is drawn into a complex relationship with a troubled Irish family. Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin.

Peter Murphy is a writer, musician and journalist from Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. His first novel John the Revelator was published in the UK and Ireland by Faber & Faber and in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and has been nominated for the 2011 IMPAC literary award and shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Book Awards. One of Ireland's most respected arts writers, his journalism has been published in Rolling Stone, Music Week and the Irish Times and he currently serves as contributing editor with Dublin's Hot Press magazine. He is also a regular guest on RTE's arts review show “The View” and has contributed liner notes to the forthcoming remastered Anthology of American Folk Music. Maureen Dezell covered arts, culture and boldface names for the Boston Globe, city politics and urban issues for the Boston Phoenix, and health care for Boston Business Journal. Author of the critically acclaimed book Irish America: Coming Into Clover (Anchor 2002) and a former Emerson College journalism adjunct professor, she is now an independent writer and an editor at Boston College.

George Friedman is the founder and CEO of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor at www.stratfor.com), an online publisher of geopolitical intelligence that pioneered the field of private intelligence. Friedman is the author of numerous articles and books on international affairs, warfare and intelligence. His book T*he Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century* is a New York Times best seller. Included among his previous books are *The Future of War, The Intelligence Edge,* and *America’s Secret War*.

Stephen Kinzer is Visiting Professor of International Relations at Boston University and a columnist for The Guardian. His books include All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003), Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006), and Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future (2010).

Michael Fischer teaches anthropology at MIT. His books include Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (1980), Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (1990), Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry (2004), and Anthropological Futures (2009).

Sohrab Ahmari is co-editor of *Re-Orient*, a forthcoming anthology of essays by young Arab and Iranian reformers, and a frequent contributor to *The Boston Globe*, *The Guardian*, *Tehran Bureau*, and the *Huffington Post*. A law student at Northeastern University, he is a member of the American Islamic Congress' New England Council.

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of *Tehran Bureau*, a “virtual” bureau connecting journalists, Iran experts and readers all over the world, in partnership with the PBS public affairs series FRONTLINE. Her work includes reporting for the *Los Angeles Times*, *TIME Magazine*, and *Foreign Policy*.

Nader Hashemi teaches Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of *Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies* (2009) and co-editor, with Danny Postel, of *The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future* (2011).

Danny Postel is the author of *Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran *(2006) and co-editor, with Nader Hashemi, of *The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future *(2011). He is the editor of *The Common Review*, a contributing editor of *Logos*, and Communications Coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.

Having been elected to Cleveland's City Council at age 23, Dennis J. Kucinich was well-known to Cleveland residents when they chose him as their mayor in 1977 at the age of 31. At the time, Kucinich was the youngest person ever elected to lead a major American city. In 1978, Cleveland's banks demanded that he sell the city's 70 year-old municipally-owned electric system to its private competitor (in which the banks had a financial interest) as a precondition of extending credit to city government. When Mayor Kucinich refused to sell Muny Light, the banks took the unprecedented step of refusing to roll over the city’s debt, as is customary. Instead, they pushed the city into default. It turned out the banks were thoroughly interlocked with the private utility, CEI, which would have acquired monopoly status by taking over Muny Light. Five of the six banks held almost 1.8 million shares of CEI stock; of the 11 directors of CEI, eight were also directors of four of the six banks involved. By holding to his promise and putting principle above politics, Kucinich lost his re-election bid and his political career was temporarily derailed. But today, Kucinich stands vindicated for having confronted the Enron of his day, and for saving the municipal power company. "There is little debate," wrote Cleveland Magazine in May 1996, "over the value of Muny Light today. Now Cleveland Public Power, it is a proven asset to the city that between 1985 and 1995 saved its customers $195,148,520 over what they would have paid CEI." He also preserved hundreds of union jobs. In addition to being Mayor of Cleveland, Kucinich has served on the Cleveland City Council (1970-75, 1981-82); served as the Clerk of Courts for the Cleveland Municipal Court (1976-77); been an Ohio State Senator (1994-96); and in November 2008, was elected to his seventh term as a Member of the United States House of Representatives (1997-present). Kucinich was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 8, 1946. He is the eldest of 7 children of Frank and Virginia Kucinich. He and his family lived in twenty-one places by the time Kucinich was 17 years old. Kucinich graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Speech Communications from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio in 1974. Kucinich has held many jobs outside of politics including being a hospital orderly, newspaper copy boy, teacher, consultant, television analyst and author. Since being elected to Congress in 1996, Kucinich has been a tireless advocate for worker rights, civil rights and human rights. In Congress, Kucinich has authored and co-sponsored legislation to create a national health care system, preserve Social Security, lower the costs of prescription drugs, provide economic development through infrastructure improvements, abolish the death penalty, provide universal prekindergarten to all 3, 4, and 5 year olds, create a Department of Peace, regulate genetically engineered foods, repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, and provide tax relief to working class families. Kucinich has been honored by Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters as a champion of clean air, clean water and an unspoiled earth. Kucinich has twice been an official United States delegate to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (1998, 2004) and attend the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. In his district, Kucinich has been recognized by the Greater Cleveland AFL-CIO as a tireless advocate for the social and economic interests of his community. Kucinich led the effort to save Cleveland's 90 year-old steel industry and the thousands of jobs and retiree benefits it provides. While hundreds of community hospitals have been closed throughout the country, Kucinich led a community-based effort to reopened two Cleveland neighborhood hospitals. Kucinich worked with the nation's largest railroads to create a merger agreement that improved rail safety while diverting a heavy volume of train traffic away from heavily populated residential areas of his district. In Cleveland, Kucinich has been honored by the Cleveland AFL-CIO, the Ohio PTA, the NASA Glenn Research Center, the Salvation Army, the United States Post Office, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, Ohio’s Boys Town, and the Human Rights Campaign. Kucinich is a current member of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States (IATSE), an AFL-CIO affiliated union. Kucinich is the Ranking Member of the Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He is also a member of the Education and Workforce Committee. In November 2010, Dennis Kucinich was reelected to a eighth term in Congress.

Kenneth Ledford a social historian of modern Germany, from 1789 to the present. His research interests focus primarily upon processes of class formation, particularly the emergence and decline of the profound influence of the educated, liberal middle-class of education, the Bildungsbürgertum. The salient ideology of this social group was classical liberalism, whose vocabulary both shaped and was shaped by the primary social institution of the Bürgertum, law and the legal order. Thus, Professor Ledford has written about German lawyers in private practice, and his present work is on a book about the Prussian judiciary between 1848 and 1918. A clearer analysis of the complex interplay among state, civil society, and the ideology of the state ruled by law (Rechtsstaat) remains the goal of Professor Ledford. Professor Ledford's teaching interests extend beyond German history since 1789 to include the history of the European middle classes, the history of the professions, European legal history, other processes of class formation including German and European labor history, as well as the history of European international relations and diplomatic history.