ABOUT THE GUESTS
Dr. Jim
Walsh
Senior Research Associate, MIT’s Security Studies Program
Dr. Jim Walsh is a Senior Research Associate at the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP). Dr. Walsh’s research and writings focus on international security, and in particular, topics involving nuclear weapons, the Middle East, and East Asia. Dr. Walsh has testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of nuclear terrorism, Iran, and North Korea. He is one of a handful of Americans who have traveled to both Iran and North Korea for talks with officials about nuclear issues. His recent publications include “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences” and “Rivals, Adversaries, and Partners: Iran and Iraq in the Middle East” in Iran and Its Neighbors. He is the international security contributor to the NPR program “Here and Now,” and his comments and analysis have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and numerous other national and international media outlets. Before coming to MIT, Dr. Walsh was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He has taught at both Harvard University and MIT. Dr. Walsh received his Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Annie
Tracy Samuel
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Annie Tracy Samuel is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Prior to joining the UTC faculty, Prof. Tracy Samuel served as a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Tel Aviv University and a B.A. in history and political science from Columbia University. She specializes in the modern history of Iran and the Middle East.
Tracy Samuel’s scholarship has been published in International Security, Diplomatic History, and Harvard’s International Security Discussion Papers series, and her commentary on current events has been featured by The Hill, Lawfare, CNN, The Atlantic, and ABC News Channel 9. She has presented her work at the Middle East Studies Association, Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, and the American Historical Association, and she has participated in policy briefings at the U.S. Departments of Defense and State.
Her current research projects include a book manuscript on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Iran-Iraq War, a book chapter on Iran’s security and nuclear policies, and an article on Moroccan foreign policy. The last is based on fieldwork conducted in Morocco in the summer of 2015, which was supported by the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, the UTC Faculty Senate, and the UTC Office of Equity and Inclusion.
Dr. Suzanne
Maloney
Deputy Director of the Foreign Policy program, The Brookings Institution
Suzanne Maloney is deputy director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow in the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and Energy Security and Climate Initiative, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy. Her books include the 2008 monograph “Iran’s Long Reach” (United States Institute of Peace, 2008) as well as “Iran’s Political Economy since the Revolution,” published in August 2015 by Cambridge University Press. Her Brookings Essay, “Iran Surprises Itself And The World,” was released in September 2013, and she has also published articles in a variety of academic and policy journals.
Maloney previously served as an external advisor to senior State Department officials on long-term issues related to Iran. Before joining Brookings, she served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, as Middle East advisor for ExxonMobil Corporation, and director of the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S. policy toward Iran, chaired by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
She holds a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.