Philip G. Roeder (Ph. D. Harvard University, 1978) is professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. A specialist on the politics of the Soviet successor states, Roeder has focused his recent research on the design of political institutions for countries torn apart by secessionist movements. He is the author of Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton) and Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics (Princeton). He is the co-author of Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton) and co-editor of Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy After Civil Wars (Cornell). His articles have appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, World Politics, and International Studies Quarterly. He is currently working on two longer-term projects:

1. Alternatives to Independence (What are the consequences of various institutional arrangements designed to avoid granting independence to secessionists?) and
2. The Tenacity of the Nation-State (Why do states almost never relinquish sovereignty willingly?)

Jacob Shapiro (speaker) is a CISAC postdoctoral fellow. His primary research interest is the organization of terrorism and insurgency. His other research interests include international relations, organization theory, and security policy. Shapiro's ongoing projects study the balance between secrecy and openness in counterterrorism, the impact of international human rights law on democracies' foreign policy, the causes of militant recruitment in Islamic countries, and the relationship between public goods provision and insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy. As a Naval Reserve officer he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Warfare Development Command. He served on active duty at Special Boat Team 20 and onboard the USS Arthur W. Radford (DD-968). He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan.

Jeremy Weinstein (discussant) 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.

Jeanne Mager Stellman (speaker) has just recently joined the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn N.Y as Professor and Director of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. She had been a member of the faculty of the School of Public Health at Columbia University since 1981 and directed the General Public Health track. Stellman is actively engaged in research on herbicides in Vietnam and was director of a multimillion dollar study for the National Academy of Science to develop exposure methodologies for epidemiological studies of military herbicides. She and her husband, Steven D. Stellman, are collaborating on several follow-up studies and, with National Library of Medicine support, she is now creating a website on Vietnam that uses the geographic information system they developed to make it accessible to researchers around the world. The Stellmans are the recipient of The American Legion's Distinguished Service Medal because of their ongoing research and assistance to veterans. In addition, Stellman is now heavily engaged in research and policy in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. She served on the EPA's Technical Advisory Panel for WTC Cleanup and is a consultant to the Mt. Sinai WTC Medical Monitoring program, where she is co-directing research on the mental health and well-being of the first responders. Stellman served as Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, 4th edition (1998). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and was named one of Ms. Magazine's "80 women to watch in the 80's." She has written several books, many monographs and chapters and peer-reviewed publications.

Lynn Eden (discussant) is associate director for research/senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security.

Jessica Weeks is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, the 2007-2008 Zukerman Fellow and a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC, and the Teaching Assistant for the CISAC Honors Program. Her dissertation, "Leaders, Accountability, and Foreign Policy in Non-Democracies" studies how different levels of domestic accountability affect leaders' decisions about international conflict. Additional research investigates the effectiveness of military interventions, and the escalation and resolution of international military crises.

Jessica graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Political Science from The Ohio State University in 2001, and received an MA in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Martha Crenshaw (speaker) is a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI and a professor of political science by courtesy. She was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought and professor of government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., from 1974 to 2007. Her current research focuses on innovation in terrorist campaigns, the distinction between "old" and "new" terrorism, how terrorism ends, and why the United States is the target of terrorism. She serves on the Executive Board of Women in International Security and chairs the American Political Science Association (APSA) Task Force on Political Violence and Terrorism. She has served on the Council of the APSA and is a former President and Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). In 2004 ISPP awarded her its Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution and in 2005 the Jeanne Knutson award for service to the society. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security, Orbis, Political Psychology, Security Studies, and Terrorism and Political Violence. She coordinated the working group on political explanations of terrorism for the 2005 Club de Madrid International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. She is a lead investigator with the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (NC-START) at the University of Maryland, funded by the Department of Homeland Security. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005-2006. She serves on the Committee on Law and Justice and the Committee on Determining Basic Research Needs to Interrupt the Improvised Explosive Device Delivery Chain of the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science. She was a senior fellow at the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City for 2006-2007.

David Laitin (discussant) is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a CISAC faculty member. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, and Estonia. His latest book is Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad. He is currently working on a project in collaboration with James Fearon on civil wars in the past half-century. From that project, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" has appeared in the American Political Science Review. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.