The Outlook

Walker Wilson and Parnav Akella sit down for a conversation with Margot Wallström. Today we're excited and honored to be joined by Margot Wallström. Margot Wallström served as the European Commissioner for the environment, European Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, as well as the Vice President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2010. She was also appointed as the first special representative on sexual violence conflict to the United Nations in 2010. In addition, she was Sweden's Minister for Nordic Cooperation from 2016 to 2019. Wallström has also served as Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2019. Since leaving government, Wallström continues her international advocacy for women's rights and democratic values.

Julia Stewed, Prescott Herzog, and Nelson Zhang sit down for a conversation with Dr. Babu Rahman. Dr. Rahman has been a British diplomat since 1998. He is a Research Analyst in the Diplomatic Service, specializing in the UN, with a particular focus on conflict and human rights. As a Research Analyst, he provides objective research, analysis, and advice to support policymaking. He has also performed a number of front-line diplomatic roles, including numerous UN negotiations in New York and Geneva, and in 2006 serving at the UK Embassy in Kabul. He has worked extensively on civil-military integration through secondments to the UK’s cross-government Stabilization Unit and working alongside UK, NATO, and African Union forces in the field. Between 2013 and 2015, he took leave from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to serve as Senior Special Assistant to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Somalia, based in Mogadishu. Between 2015 and 2017, he was Deputy Head of Research Analysts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From 2019 to 2020, he was the Special Adviser to the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan. He holds a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University in Wales and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Her Late Majesty the Queen in 2015 for services to peacebuilding in Somalia. 

Madeleine Shaw, Victor Lago, Amen Salha, Pranav Akella, Josephine Kramer, Taanvi Gowdar, and Daniel Park sit down with retired Ambassador Erica Barks-Ruggles. Ambassador Barks-Ruggles served for 32 years in senior leadership and diplomatic positions; most recently leading the successful U.S. effort to rejoin UNESCO, setting up the U.S. Mission from scratch and re-establishing U.S. leadership in the U.N.'s lead institution on AI and emerging technology ethics, education standards, and cultural preservation. She served as the Senior Representative and Head of Delegation to four major International Telecommunication Union conferences in 2022 and oversaw all U.S. policies and relationships with the United Nations while leading the Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IO). Prior to that, she was Senior Diplomatic Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Acting Chancellor of the College of International Strategic Affairs (CISA) at the National Defense University. From 2015 to 2018, Barks-Ruggles served as the Ambassador of the United States to the Republic of Rwanda. Earlier in her career as a diplomat and civil servant, she served as the Deputy to the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations serving on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor overseeing international human rights, and democracy programming in the Middle East and South and Central Asia.

 Vidhi Piparia,  Madeleine Shaw, and Adam Saltzman sit down for a conversation with Dahlia Scheindlin. Dahlia Scheindlin is a fellow at Century International, based in Tel Aviv. She is a public opinion expert and an international political and strategic consultant,  as well as a scholar, writer, and columnist aT Haaretz English; she holds a PhD from Tel Aviv University and she is the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel, published in September 2023. She has advised and conducted research on nine national campaigns in Israel over twenty-five years, and has provided research and advising for elections, referendums, and civil society campaigns in fifteen different countries and regions. In the past, she has worked as a senior analyst for the Washington-based global firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR), the director of international campaigns at GCS Issue Management, and a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. As an independent consultant, she conducts extensive public opinion and policy research on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the peace process (including working for Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the Camp David negotiations in 2000, through GQRR). She also consults on the issues of democracy, human rights, minority relations, religious identity, Arab–Jewish relations, and foreign affairs for a range of local and international NGOs. She conducts the ongoing joint Israeli–Palestinian public opinion survey together with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Victor Lago, Madeleine Shaw, and Pranav Kela sit down to talk with Captain Omer Rafiq. Captain Omer Rafiq is a Captain in the United States Marine
Corps Reserves, currently serving at Special Operations Central Command in Tampa, FL. He enlisted in the reserve component of the Marine Corps in August 2010. Following initial training, he deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Commissioned as an infantry officer in 2016, he deployed across the globe to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa. Most recently, he was one of two US Department of Defense officials on the ground in Port of Sudan supporting the evacuation of US and allied nation citizens from Sudan amidst the recent civil war.

Elizabeth Shackelford is the Magro Family Distinguished Fellow in International Affairs for the Spring 2024 term. She served as a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department, with postings in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. Her outstanding work in South Sudan during the civil war earned her the prestigious Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence. She gained international recognition for her principled resignation in protest of the State Department policies of the Trump administration, which sparked important discussions about diplomacy and governance. That led to her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, which chronicles the challenges facing US foreign policy in the modern world. 

Josh Paul resigned from the State Department in October 2023 due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration's decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in the context of its war on Gaza. He had  spent over 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He previously worked on security sector reform in both Iraq and the West Bank, with additional roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Army Staff, and as a Congressional staffer. Josh holds Masters degrees from the Universities of Georgetown and St Andrews, Scotland. 

Stuart Reid is an executive editor at Foreign Affairs magazine and author of The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination. He has written for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Politico Magazine, and Slate. Stuart grew up in Ontario and Ohio, and received a bachelor’s degree in Government from Dartmouth College.

Vivian Salama covers national security for the Wall Street Journal, based in Washington. She has covered U.S. foreign policy and national security issues for nearly two decades, reporting from more than 80 countries. Before moving to Washington, she served as Baghdad bureau chief for the Associated Press, during which time she covered the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, as well as Iran's growing influence across the region. She also covered the refugee and IDP crisis spurred by the violence, visiting camps across the Middle East. The experience inspired Salama to write a children's book -- The Long Journey Home -- about an innocent Syrian boy who is forced to flee his home because of the war.