The National Interest Foundation invites you to attend a panel discussion event regarding the upcoming October elections in Tunisia.

Speakers:
H.E. Ambassador (ret.) Gordon Gray, Former U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia
Sharan Grewal, Brookings Institution
Radwan Masmoudi, Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy
Patricia Karam, Arab Center Washington D.C.

Moderator:
Khaled Saffuri, National Interest Foundation

Disclaimer: NIF events are by email invitation only and are non-transferable. You will receive a confirmation email if you have been successfully added to our event attendee list upon registration. Those who do not receive a confirmation email will not be admitted. Also, please note that when registering for any of our events, all required fields must be properly filled out. We reserve the right to deny entry to those who fail to do so.

*A light lunch will be served at the event.

About our Speakers:

H.E. Ambassador (ret.) Gordon Gray is the Kuwait Professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Prior to his retirement from the U.S. government after 35 years of public service, Ambassador Gray was the Deputy Commandant at the National War College. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia from 2009 until 2012, witnessing the start of the Arab Spring and directing the U.S. response in support of Tunisia’s transition. He served in Iraq as Senior Advisor to the Ambassador from 2008-2009 and was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2005-2008. Ambassador Gray’s other foreign assignments include Egypt, Canada, Jordan, Pakistan, and Morocco, where he began his career in government as a Peace Corps volunteer. Before joining the faculty at the Elliott School, Ambassador Gray was a Professor of Practice at Penn State’s School of International Affairs. He was previously Chief Operating Officer at the Center for American Progress and Executive Vice President at the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce. Ambassador Gray holds a B.A. from Yale, an M.A. from Columbia, and an honorary M.S. from the National Defense University.

Sharan Grewal is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution. He is also an assistant professor of government at American University and a faculty affiliate at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard. He received a doctorate in politics from Princeton University in 2018. Grewal’s research examines revolutions and democratic transitions, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. His first book, “Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring” (Oxford University Press, 2023), examines why militaries support or thwart democratic transitions. It won the APSA Best Book in MENA Politics Award and co-won the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award. He is currently writing a second book on the rise and fall of Tunisian democracy. Sharan has published academic articles in the American Political Science Review and the American Journal of Political Science, among other journals. These articles have explored the effects of U.S. military training in Tunisia, the response of Algeria’s military to the Hirak protests, and the conditions under which Islamists moderate or radicalize. These articles have won best paper and article awards from APSA as well as the Perry World House-Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Prize. Sharan has also written for the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, New Lines Magazine, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and has been interviewed by the New York Times, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters, among others.

Radwan Masmoudi is the founder and president of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting freedom, democracy, and good governance in the Arab/Muslim world. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Center’s quarterly publication, Muslim Democrat. In 1998, Masmoudi established the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID). Four years later, he left his engineering career to serve as the full-time president of CSID. Under his leadership, CSID has grown into a major institution with programs and activities in over 20 countries, and over 600 regular and associate members. Throughout his career, he has written and published several articles on Islam, democracy, freedom, and human rights in the Muslim world. He is a frequent commentator on several TV networks including CNN, Al-Jazeera, Fox News, Algerian TV, and MBC.

Patricia Karam is a nonresident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. She held multiple senior managerial positions in nongovernmental organizations over the past 20 years, working at the nexus of problem analysis, policy formulation, and impactful program implementation aimed at social and policy change in a range of complex, conflict-ridden settings across the globe. Most recently, Karam was Middle East North Africa (MENA) Regional Director at the International Republican Institute, where she was responsible for the strategic oversight and leadership of a multimillion-dollar portfolio of programs focused on citizen-responsive governance, political party development, legislative strengthening, and civil society capacity-building. Prior to that, as MENA Director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Karam was responsible for research, advocacy, grant-making, and technical assistance projects aimed at improving natural resource governance managed through country offices she established in Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya. As a deputy director at the International Center for Transitional Justice, she oversaw educational transitional justice programs and spearheaded the expansion of a Documentation Affinity Group, a global network of action-oriented and grassroots documentation-focused human rights groups. She also held a combination of senior management, fundraising, and grant-making roles at the US Institute of Peace, Iraq Foundation, the Iraqi Embassy, and New York University’s Trauma Studies Program. Karam’s research expertise covers political party development, conflict-mitigation, peacebuilding and transitions, good governance and anti-corruption, natural resource management, transitional justice and human rights, and gender/women’s rights and empowerment. She has published widely on the politics of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and North Africa, as well as on great power competition and the dynamics of authoritarianism and conflict in the broader Middle East region. She holds a dual Political Science/Religious Studies BA from Brown University and an MSFS degree with an Arab Studies concentration from Georgetown University. Her PhD work at New York University revolved around identity politics in the Western Sahara.

About our Moderator:

Khaled Saffuri is the Founder and President of the National Interest Foundation (NIF), a nonpartisan think tank and nonprofit organization established in April of 2018 which is focused on bettering relationships between the United States and countries across the globe through the promotion of smarter foreign policy. Mr. Saffuri has previously served as a Principal at Meridian Strategies providing international business and government clients with strategic and public affairs consulting services, and also founded and ran one of the United States’ prominent and most active organizations to represent the Middle East and Muslim-Americans. He has worked for many years with Members of Congress and has testified in front of Congressional Committees, advising them on international issues and leading Congressional delegations to the Middle East. Due to his extensive background and expertise, Mr. Saffuri is a regular contributor to a number of important media outlets in the United States and internationally including CNN, CBS, and BBC, and contributes articles and written publications to outlets such as The Washington Post and The American Conservative.

Note: additional speakers may be announced later