Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) is a “Think Tank Without Walls” connecting the research and action of more than one thousand scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. It is on the web at www.fpif.org.
Dan Beeton has more than a dozen years of experience working on international policy issues with organizations including the Center for Economic Justice, Haiti Reborn, and the US Campaign for Burma. He was associate director for Citizens Trade Campaign. His writings on Haiti, Latin America, trade, and other topics have been published in the Los Angeles Times and the NACLA Report on the Americas. He is currently the international communications director at CEPR
Phyllis Benn is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terror, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, and the forthcoming Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror.
Michael Busch is senior editor at Warscapes magazine and contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus. He teaches international relations at the City College of New York, and is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Peter Certo is a writer and editor based at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where he edits the institute’s Foreign Policy in Focus website and serves as deputy editor of the nonprofit editorial syndicate OtherWords. He is also a former editor and researcher for Right Web, a project that monitors the efforts of foreign policy hawks and neoconservatives to influence US foreign policy, and before that he helped coordinate the first annual Global Day of Action on Military Spending. His writings for Foreign Policy in Focus have been syndicated in the Nation, Common Dreams, Truthout, and AlterNet, among many other progressive outlets, as well as in regionally focused publications like the Asia Times and Informed Comment.
Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com.
Sarah Harrison is a journalist, and WikiLeaks’ investigations editor. In June 2013, Harrison accompanied Edward Snowden when he left Hong Kong to seek asylum, ensuring he could leave Hong Kong safely and receive asylum from the Russian Federation. She is the acting director of the Courage Foundation, which manages the legal defense of Edward Snowden, among others, and fights for the protection of truth-tellers worldwide. Harrison was a senior coordinator in the Cablegate publication, and in the creation of the PlusD archive.
Richard Heydarian is an assistant professor in political science at De La Salle University, Philippines, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on international relations. He has authored more than 400 articles, policy papers, and op-eds on Asian geopolitical and economic affairs, writing for and/or interviewed by Foreign Affairs, the BBC, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Interest, and the Nation, among other publications. As a specialist on foreign policy and economic development issues, he has served as a consultant to a number of local and international institutions, and written for various leading think tanks across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. He is the author of How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Arab Uprisings and The Philippines: The US, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Pivot State (forthcoming).
Dahr Jamail is an award-winning independent journalist who reported from within US-occupied Iraq for over a year. He is the author of three books about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and is a staff reporter for Truthout.org.
Jake Johnston is the lead author for CEPR’s Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog, and has authored papers on Haiti concerning the ongoing cholera epidemic, aid accountability and transparency, and the US foreign aid system. His articles have been published in outlets such as the Hill, AlterNet, Truthout, and the Caribbean Journal.
Alexander Main is the senior associate for international policy at CEPR. His areas of expertise include Latin American integration and regionalism, US security and counternarcotics policy in Central America, US development assistance to Haiti, and US relations with Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Venezuela. He has written for Foreign Policy, the Los Angeles Times, NACLA, Dissent and Le Monde diplomatique. He is regularly interviewed by international media such as CNN en español, Telemundo, Al Jazeera English, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Robert Naiman is policy director at Just Foreign Policy (just-foreignpolicy.org), a non-partisan, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to reforming US foreign policy so that it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. He writes on US policy reform issues for the Huffington Post and other publications. He is president of the board of Truthout.
Francis Njubi Nesbitt is an associate professor of Africana studies at San Diego State University. He is the author of Race for Sanctions and Politics of African Diasporas (2012). He was a visiting scholar and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (2004–05) and at the United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya (2013). He has published numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as African Affairs, Critical Arts, Journal of American History, International Journal of Southern African Studies, African Issues, Mots Pluriels, Loccumer Protokolle, KulturAustausch, African World, and Africa World Review. He is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus. His articles on Africa and foreign affairs are published in numerous newspapers and magazines around the world.
Linda Pearson is a Sydney-based activist and writer. She has covered Cablegate for Green Left Weekly on a range of topics, from Australian foreign policy to US interference in Ecuador. She has also documented the US criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and the Australian government’s treatment of Julian Assange since 2010. She has been actively involved in campaigning to support WikiLeaks and defend the rights of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian who specializes in covering issues related to the US national security state. Since 2004, he has written on US policy and operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as toward Iran. Porter was the winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. He was Saigon bureau chief of Dispatch News Service International in 1971. He was co-director of the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, DC, an antiwar education and lobbying organization, from 1973 to 1975. Porter is the author of five books. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
Tim Shorrock is a writer based in Washington, DC, and the author of Spies for Hire, the first book about the mass privatization of US intelligence. He grew up in Japan and South Korea during the Cold War, and has been covering the East Asia region since the late 1970s. In 1996, he broke a major story about the previously hidden role of the US government in a violent 1980 military coup in South Korea. Shorrock’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, the Nation, Salon, the Daily Beast and Foreign Policy in Focus. He currently writes a weekly blog for the Nation on national security, media, and the business of war. Much of his writing, as well as many documents from his stories, can be found on his blog Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears, at www.timshorrock.com. He also posts frequently on Twitter using @TimothyS.
Russ Wellen edits the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points for the Institute of Policy Studies. His interests include Russia and nuclear weapons, and he is a disarmament activist. He has written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Journal of Psychohistory. Currently, he is writing a book with the working title Nuclear Ghoul.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. Recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of US Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, he serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, is an associate editor of Peace Review, a contributing editor of Tikkun, and a co-chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.