our first speaker will be bassam haddad, direct ever of middle east studies program at george washington university. the founder of the arab studies journal. and most recently the co-founder of the excellent online journal, jeddilia.com. he's written a number of important contributions on syria. including the new book, "business networks: the political commentary of brilliance." and published an interesting essay called the "idiot's guide to fighting dictatorship while opposing military intervention." sorry, that was a long title. our next speaker will be ismael at the school of oriental and african studies at the university of london. written two of what i believe to be the best books about political islam in egypt, particularly in cairo. and she's also spent a great deal of time living and working in syria. she in fact was in syria from november 2010 until the end of may of this year. and had some firsthand experience with the evolution of the protests in damascus. she has new article out called "syria's uprising" in the journal studies in ethnicity and nationalism and quite a bit more

bassam haddad is the founder of a journal. he is the co-founder of an excellent online journal. he has written a number of important contributions on syria, including the new book " business networks, the political economy of authoritarian resilience." he recently published an interesting essay called "the idiots guide to fighting dictatorship while posing military intervention." [laughter] our next speaker will be in salwa ismail a professor at the university of london. she has written two of the best books about political islam in egypt. particularly in cairo. she has spent a great deal of time living and working in syria. she was in syria from november 2010 until the end of may of this year. she had some firsthand experiences with the evolution of the protests in damascus. she has a new article out called "siri's uprising -- syria's uprising." she has more coming out in the months to come. finally, stephen heydemann. he previously directed and taught at columbia university. he is the author of the book "authoritarianism in syria at." kias recently the author of a policy brief

our first speaker, we have bassam haddad. he is the founding editor of the arab studies journal and most recently, they see -- he is the co-founder of an online journal. he has written a number of editorials on syria. he recently published a particularly interesting essay called the idiot's guide to fighting dictatorship while imposing military intervention. sorry thambings long title. our next speaker is salwa ismail. she has written two of what i believe to be the very best books about political islam in egypt, particularly in cairo and she has also spent a great deal of time living and working in syria. she in fact was in syria from november 2010, until the end of may this year and had some first hand experience with the evolution of the protest in damascus. she has a new article out called "syria's uprising" in the journal studies of nationalism and has i think quite a bit more coming out on syria in the months and years to come. finally, steven heydemann. he previously directed the center for democracy at georgetown univ