Max Abrahms is a PhD candidate at UCLA focusing on the interface of terrorism and international relations theory. Abrahms has published in International Security, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Middle East Policy. Prior to coming to Stanford, Abrahms was a research associate at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; a fellow at Tel Aviv University; a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and a commissioned op-ed writer on Palestinian terrorism for the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared as a terrorism analyst on ABC News, Al-Arabiyya, Al-Hurra, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNN Financial, Fox News, National Public Radio, and PBS. Abrahms is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (summa cum laude) and Oxford University, where he read his MPhil in International Relations.

Paul Stockton is a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He was formerly the associate provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and was the founding director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. His research focuses on how U.S. security institutions respond to changes in the threat (including the rise of terrorism), and the interaction of Congress and the Executive branch in restructuring national security budgets, policies and institutional arrangements. Stockton also serves as co-teacher of the CISAC Honors Program, which assists Stanford seniors in writing theses on international security.

Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in August 1990. From 1995 until 2000, he served as director of NPS' Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, he founded and served as the acting dean of NPS' School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed associate provost in 2001.

Stockton is the editor of Homeland Security, a graduate text to be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Stockton serves on the editorial review board of Homeland Security Affairs, the quarterly journal he helped establish in 2005. His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security, and Strategic Survey. He is co-editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). He has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

From 1986-1989 Stockton served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Stockton was Senator Moynihan's personal representative on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was principal advisor to the senator on defense, intelligence, counter narcotics policy and foreign affairs. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by CISAC. During his graduate studies at Harvard, he served as a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Stockton received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1986.

Emily Meierding is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Chicago Department of Political Science. Her dissertation examines the role of natural resources in interstate conflict and cooperation. She is a participant in the Center for International Studies' Project on Environmental Conflict at the University of Chicago.

James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of political science and CISAC affiliated faculty member at Stanford University. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. He is presently working on a book manuscript (with David Laitin) on civil war since 1945. Recent publications include "Iraq's Civil War" (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007), "Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States" (International Security, Spring 2004), and "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," (APSR, February 2003). Fearon won the 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, which is "presented annually to a scholar under the age of forty, or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her Doctoral Degree, who is judged to have made, through a body publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research." He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Page Fortna (Ph.D. Harvard University 1998) is a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Her research focuses on the durability of peace in the aftermath of both civil and interstate wars. She is the author of, Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace (Princeton University Press, 2004) and has published articles in World Politics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. She is currently finishing a book evaluating the effectiveness of peacekeeping in civil wars (forthcoming, Princeton University Press), and is beginning a project on long-term historical trends in war termination. She has been a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (2004-2005) and a Visiting Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, MA (2002-2003). Before coming to Columbia, Fortna was a pre-doctoral and then a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Her graduate work was done in the Government Department at Harvard University (Ph.D. 1998). Before graduate school, she worked at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington DC. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University.

Jeremy Weinstein is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he directed the bi-partisan Commission on Weak States and US National Security. While working on his PhD, with funding from the Jacob Javits Fellowship, a Sheldon Fellowship, and the World Bank, he conducted hundreds of interviews with rebel combatants and civilians in both Africa and Latin America for his forthcoming book, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. He has also worked on the National Security Council staff; served as a visiting scholar at the World Bank; was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and received a research fellowship in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He received his BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and his MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

Patrick Johnston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation, "Humanitarian Intervention and the Strategic Logic of Mass Atrocities in Civil Wars," asks why ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence frequently increase dramatically after international actors threaten to intervene militarily or deploy significant numbers of troops in coercive interventions. Johnston received a BA in history and a BA in political science, both with distinction, from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.

Stephen J. Stedman joined CISAC in 1997 as a senior research scholar, and was named a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC and professor of political science (by courtesy) in 2002. He served as the center's acting co-director for the 2002-2003 academic year. Currently he directs the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies at Stanford and CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. His current research addresses the future of international organizations and institutions, an area of study inspired by his recent work at the United Nations. In the fall of 2003 he was recruited to serve as the research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to stay on at the U.N. as a special advisor with the rank of assistant secretary-general, to help gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work, Stedman returned to CISAC. Before coming to Stanford, Stedman was an associate professor of African studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on issues of peacekeeping in civil war, light weapons proliferation and conflict in Africa, and preventive diplomacy. In 2000 Scott Sagan and he founded the CISAC Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. Stedman received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1988.

Edward Miguel received his PhD at Harvard in 2000, the same year he joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005. He recently received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics for "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities" (with Michael Kremer), which appeared in Econometrica. He also was the recipient of the 2005 Sloan Fellowship. At Berkeley he has received the Best Graduate Adviser Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Miguel is co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics, director of the U.C. Berkeley Scientific Evaluation for Global Action program, co-organizer for Working Group in African Political Economy, associate director at CIDER, an NBER faculty research associate, a CEPR research fellow, a senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a research affiliate at the MIT Poverty Action Lab. He also has worked as a consultant for non-governmental organizations on projects in Delhi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone.

Teresa Whitfield (speaker) joined the Social Science Research Council in early March 2005 to direct the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF). Her latest book, Friends Indeed: the United Nations, Groups of Friends and the Resolution of Conflict, was researched and written while a visiting fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. From 1995-2000 Teresa worked as an official within the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, latterly in the Office of the Under-Secretary-General of Political Affairs. She has also worked as a consultant with the Ford Foundation and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and has a long association with CPPF, serving as regional advisor on Latin America from 2001-2003 and as acting director from 2001-2002. Her research interests include the United Nations, peace operations and the mediation of internal conflict. She has published on peace processes in Central America and Colombia, as well as on the role played by informal groups of states, or “Friends” in the resolution of conflict. A journalist and filmmaker in her early career, Teresa’s publications include Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Temple University Press, 1994), written while living in El Salvador from 1990-1992, and, most recently, a chapter on Colombia co-authored with Cynthia J. Arnson in Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005). She holds an MA in Latin American studies from the University of London and a BA in English literature from Cambridge University.

Patrick Johnston (discussant) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation, "Humanitarian Intervention and the Strategic Logic of Mass Atrocities in Civil Wars," asks why ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence frequently increase dramatically after international actors threaten to intervene militarily or deploy significant numbers of troops in coercive interventions. Johnston received a BA in history and a BA in political science, both with distinction, from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.