ABOUT THE GUESTS
Dr. Stephen
Kotkin
Historian & Director of the Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University
Professor Kotkin has been teaching in the Princeton history department since 1989. He holds a joint appointment in the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton. He is also a Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Professor Kotkin established the Princeton department’s Global History initiative and workshop, and teaches the graduate seminar on global history since the 1850s. He served on the core editorial committee of the World Politics, the flagship journal in comparative politics.
Dr. Alina
Polyakova
David M. Rubenstein Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, The Brookings Institution
Alina Polyakova is the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Center on the United States and Europe and adjunct professor of European studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in European politics, far-right populism and nationalism, and Russian foreign policy. Polyakova’s recent book, “The Dark Side of European Integration” (ibidem-Verlag and Columbia University Press, 2015) examines the rise of far-right political parties in Western and Eastern Europe. She has also written extensively on Russian political warfare, Ukraine, and trans-Atlantic relations.
Ambassador
Alexander
Vershbow
Former Deputy Secretary General of NATO & Former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from February 2012 to October 2016. Ambassador Vershbow took up his position in February, 2012 after serving for three years as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. In that position, he was responsible for coordinating U.S. security and defense policies relating to the nations and international organizations of Europe (including NATO), the Middle East and Africa. From 1977 to 2008, Alexander was a career member of the United States Foreign Service. He served as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1998-2001); to the Russian Federation (2001-2005); and to the Republic of Korea (2005-2008).