Phil Giraldi, Jon Utley, Norton Mezvinsky, and Fuad Sha'ban discuss Christian Zionism at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on January 30, 2013
Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946[1]) is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more even handed policies by the U.S. government in the Middle East.
Jon Basil Utley was born in Moscow, Russia, and emigrated to America in 1939. He is Publisher of The American Conservative, the Robert A. Taft Fellow for International and Constitutional Studies at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a writer for Antiwar.com and Reason.com. He has written widely on third-world development economics, foreign policy, terrorism and civil defense. In the Nineties he worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation on promoting the transition to free markets in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Norton Mezvinsky (born 1932) is an American historian, professor, and author. He is a Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Central Connecticut State University and is the president of the International Council for Middle East Studies, an academic think tank in Washington, D.C.[1][2] He has written numerous published books, articles and book reviews that deal with various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Zionism.
Fuad Sha’ban is Vice President of Yarmouk Private University in Jbab, Syria, and Professor of Literature and Translation in the Department of English at the University of Petra in Amman, Jordan. He recently served as Dean of Arts & Sciences at the University of Petra (2004-2009). In addition, he was Professor at the University of Damascus; Associate Professor at Riyadh University; Visiting Professor at James Madison University; Distinguished Research Visiting Fellow in Islamic and Arabian Development Studies at Duke University; Senior Visiting Professor at Duke University; Visiting Lecturer at Qatar University; Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, UAE University; and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UAE University.
Prof. Sha’ban received his Ph.D. in English and Renaissance and American Literature from Duke University in 1965. He earned his M.A. in English from Duke University in 1961 and his B.A. in English from Damascus University in 1958. His areas of specialization and research are English Language and Literature: 19th Century Renaissance American Literature; Translation; and American Orientalism.
An eminent scholar, Prof. Sha’ban currently devotes his energies and experience toward addressing Western—mainly American—readers and audiences, explaining and analyzing our common values and historical experiences, the risks of excluding one another from our common humanity and the dangers of extremism that plague both East and West.
