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Research Steering Committee

The W2I Project invited a distinguished group of policy makers and experts to provide strategic advice throughout its implementation. Research Steering Committee meetings took place in Montreal on 26 May 2008 and 29 September 2008. The names of the members of the Research Steering Committee are listed below and their biographies can be viewed by clicking on their names.

Maurice Baril served in the Canadian Forces for forty years. During his military career, he held command and staff responsibilities across Canada and in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Africa. In the 1990s, he was commander of the Army Combat Training Centre, military advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations in New York, and commander of the Canadian Army from 1995–97. He was promoted to the rank of general in 1997 and appointed Canada’s chief of defence staff until his retirement in 2001. He is a graduate of Canadian Army Command and Staff College, US Army Special Forces School, Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, and École Supérieure de Guerre in Paris. Since retirement, General (Ret.) Baril has been special advisor to the ambassador for mine action of the Department of Foreign Affairs Canada. In January 2003, he was appointed inspector general in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the UN Secretariat.

Ed Broadbent was leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada from 1975–89, as Representative for Oshawa. From 1990–96, Broadbent was the founding president of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in Montreal. He was made a member of the Privy Council in 1982, an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993, and a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2002. He returned to Parliament in 2004–06, as member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre. He is now a Fellow at the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University.

Fred C. Fischer worked for the US Government for thirty-eight years, during which time he directed some of the largest disaster relief operations ever mounted. These operations included earthquake recovery in Guatemala and Nicaragua, famine and refugee relief in Pakistan, Djibouti, Kenya, southern Sudan, Somalia, Malawi, and Mozambique, covert cross-border humanitarian assistance from Pakistan into Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and aid to the victims of apartheid in South Africa. His overseas assignments included first secretary of the American Embassy in Bonn, Germany (1964–68), US coordinator for emergency relief in Ethiopia during the famine of 1984–86, and director of the usaid Regional Economic Development Services Office for East and Southern Africa, (1990–95). He was named Federal Executive of the Year in 1986 for management of the emergency relief program in Ethiopia – the largest program of its kind ever carried out by the United States. Since retiring in 1995, he has carried out consulting assignments for usaid and the Inter-American Development Bank. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a ba in Journalism and Political Science in 1956 and was a Sloan Fellow at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 1974–75.

Tom Flanagan is the award-winning author of Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power (2007) and Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and Preston Manning (1995). He managed Stephen Harper’s campaign for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance (2002) and of the Conservative Party of Canada (2004), as well as the Conservative Party’s national election campaign in 2004. He was the senior communications adviser for the Conservative Party in their successful 2006 election campaign. He studied political science at Notre Dame University, the Free University of West Berlin, and Duke University, where he received his PhD. He has taught political science at the University of Calgary since 1968 and was appointed University Professor in 2007. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1996.

Robert Fowler has had a distinguished career as a Canadian diplomat and public servant. He was the prime minister’s personal representative for Africa. He was a member of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s special advisory team on Darfur. Fowler served as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations (1995–2000) and Italy (2000–06), and as foreign policy advisor to three prime ministers. He was deputy minister of national defence from 1989–95.

Bill Graham is a former minister of Foreign Affairs and minister of National Defence. Before entering the public service and serving as a Member of Parliament for over thirteen years, Graham taught in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, where he pioneered the international law program. He was a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade from 1994–2002 and chairman from 1996–2002. In 1998, he led the drafting of the Standing Committee report on the Arctic. He served as leader of the Official Opposition in 2006 and retired from Parliament in 2007.

David A. Hamburg, MD, is DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar at Weill Cornell Medical College and chairs the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention. He was president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1982–97, and has been a professor at Stanford University and Harvard University. Hamburg is the author of No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict (2002) and Learning to Live Together: Preventing Hatred and Violence in Child and Adolescent Development (2004). He was a member of President Clinton’s Defense Policy Board and the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, and was the founder of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government. He is the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Ted Koppel is Discovery Channel’s managing editor. In this role, he anchors Koppel on Discovery, a series of long-form programming that examines major global topics and events for the largest cable network in the United States. He and his team of awardwinning producers joined the network in January 2006. Koppel is also a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. Koppel came to Discovery Channel after forty-two years at ABC News.From 1980 until 2005, he was the anchor and managing editor of ABCNews Nightline, one of the most honored broadcasts in television history. As the nation’s longest running network daily news anchor, his interviews and reporting touched every significant news story over a span of twenty-five years. A member of the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, Koppel has won every major broadcasting award including forty-two Emmy awards (one for lifetime achievement), eight George Foster Peabody awards, ten DuPont-Columbia awards and two George Polk awards. His ten Overseas Press Club awards make him the most honored journalist in the club’s history. He has received more than twenty honorary degrees from universities in the United States.

Juan É. Méndez was the United Nations’ Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide from 2004–07. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University Law Center, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and in the Oxford Master’s Programme in International Human Rights Law. His work on behalf of political prisoners of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s led to his torture and administrative detention for over a year, during which time Amnesty International adopted him as a “prisoner of  Conscience.” Following his release, he moved to the United States and began work with Human Rights Watch. Méndez has received multiple awards for his work, including the University of Dayton’s inaugural Oscar A. Romero Award for Leadership in Service to Human Rights (2000) and the Jeanne and Joseph Sullivan Award of the Heartland Alliance (2003).

Alex Neve is Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking branch. He has participated in Amnesty International missions to Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoïre, Guinea, Honduras, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Grassy Narrows, Ontario. He represented Amnesty International at the 2001 Summit of the Americas, the 2002 G8 Summit, and the 2003 Asian Plurilateral Symposium on Human Rights in China. He has appeared before numerous Canadian parliamentary committees as well as various un and Inter-American human rights bodies. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University, and a Master’s degree in international human rights law from the University of Essex. Neve is chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Centre for International Justice, and a member of the Board of Directors of Partnership Africa Canada. He was named a Trudeau Foundation Mentor in 2007 and is an officer of the Order of Canada.

André Pratte is the editor-in-chief of Montreal’s La Presse newspaper and the author of five books on journalism and politics, including Aux pays des merveilles: Essai sur les mythes politiques québécois (2006), Le Temps des girouettes (2003) and L’Énigme Charest (1997), a biography of Quebec premier Jean Charest. He was one of twelve prominent Quebecers, led by former premier Lucien Bouchard, who signed the 2005 manifesto entitled “Pour un Québec lucide” (“For a Clear-Eyed Vision of Quebec”), which provoked a passionate debate about Quebec’s future. He edited and contributed toReconquérir le Canada: un nouveau projet pour la nation Québécoise (Reconquering Canada: A New Project for the Quebec Nation), a collection of essays promoting federalism in the province.

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His previous positions include director of the US Census Bureau (1998–2001), director of the National Opinion Research Center, president of the Social Science Research Council and senior vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Russell-Sage Foundation, and is a member of other professional associations, including the Council on Foreign Relations. Among his awards are a Guggenheim fellowship, honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and Southern Methodist University, a Distinguished Service Award from the New School for Social Research, and various awards associated with his directorship of the Census Bureau. In 1990 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany.

Hugh D. Segal spent several decades in the private and public sector before being appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2005. His public sector experience spans the Cabinet office at Queen’s Park and the prime minister’s office in Ottawa. Since his appointment to the Senate, he has sat on the Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee, the Agriculture and Forestry Committee, the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Committee, and the Special Committee on Anti-Terrorism. He is a former president of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, where he remains a senior fellow, and also teaches at Queen’s University. He sits on various corporate and public boards, as well as the boards of not-for-profit and charitable organizations. In 2003, he was named to the Order of Canada. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Royal Military College and, in 2005, was appointed an honorary captain of the Canadian navy. He has authored numerous books and articles on public policy and the Conservative Party. Before his Senate appointment, he was a regular television commentator on the CTV, PBS, and CBC networks.

Jennifer Allen Simons is president of The Simons Foundation, Visiting Fellow at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and adjunct professor in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is a former director and adjunct professor of the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, which she established jointly with the university. She was a member of the Canadian government delegation to the UN 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and the 2002 Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs/Non-Governmental Organizations Consultations on Nuclear Issues. Simon Fraser University honored her with the Jennifer Allen Simons Chair in Liberal Studies and the 1996 Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award. She was awarded Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee Commemorative Medal for service in support of the global effort to eradicate land mines and is a recipient of the 2006 Vancouver Citizens’ Peace Award.

Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the department of Political Science and director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the co-author with Eugene Lang of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, which was awarded the 2007 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Her other books include Networks of Knowledge: Innovation in International Learning (2000), The Cult of Efficiency (2001), and Street Protests and Fantasy Parks(2001). In 2006, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws by the University of Alberta and by the University of Cape Breton. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and a Trudeau Fellow in 2003. Gross Stein is the recipient of the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate and an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario.

Allan Thompson is an assistant professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. He joined the faculty in 2003 after seventeen years as a reporter with the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper. Thompson worked for ten years as a correspondent for the Star on Parliament Hill, reporting on foreign affairs, defense and immigration issues. He first reported from Rwanda for the Star in 1996 during the mass exodus of Rwandan refugees from eastern Zaire. He visited Rwanda again in 1998 to research a series of feature articles. Over the years he has also chronicled Roméo Dallaire’s career in a series of reports for the Star. In January 2004, Thompson travelled to Arusha, Tanzania, to report on Dallaire’s testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the United Nations Intellectual History Project. Weiss has served as the interim executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. He was awarded the Grand Prix Humanitaire de France in 2006 and is chair of the Academic Council on the UN System. He was a co-editor of Global Governance, research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, research professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, executive director of the Academic Council on the UN System and of the International Peace Academy, a member of the UN Secretariat, and a  consultant to several public and private agencies. He has written or edited some thirty-five books and numerous scholarly articles about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian action, and sustainable development.

Harvey Yarosky has practiced law in Montreal since 1962 and has been a member and chair of various committees of the Bar of Montréal, the Bar of Québec and the Canadian Bar association, relating to the administration of justice. He taught criminal law at McGill University, where he was adjunct professor of criminal law, and at the University of Ottawa and Université de Montréal. Yarosky is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and has acted as independent counsel to the Canadian Judicial Council. Yarosky was executive assistant to the Department of Justice Committee on Hate Propaganda, the report of which formed the basis of the provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code against the promotion of genocide and hate propaganda. He has served as counsel to Senator and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Roméo Dallaire in a number of international investigations, inquiries, and proceedings regarding the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

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