Special Event- The Crimea: Europe’s Next Flashpoint?

 On Friday, November 5, 2010

Biographies:

Taras Kuzio received a BA in Economics from the University of Sussex (1980), an MA in Soviet Studies from the University of London (1985), and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Birmingham, England (1998). He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University. He is a 2010-2011 Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Visiting Fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Washington. Kuzio is a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, and Adjunct Research Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa. He was previously a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Visiting Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University, and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Kuzio is the author and editor of fourteen books and is currently writing a Contemporary History of Ukraine. He is the author of five think tank monographs and twenty-five book chapters, the most recent being “Ukraine: Muddling Along,” in Sharon L. Wolchik and Jane L. Curry eds., Central and East European Politics: From Communism to Democracy, Second Edition (Banham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2011). He has authored over sixty scholarly articles on postcommunist and Ukrainian politics, and has guest edited six special issues of academic journals, including a recent issue of Communist and Post-Communist Studies on “Communist Successor Parties in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia.” He is a long-time contributor to the Jamestown Foundation and Jane’s Information Group and is the editor of the monthly Ukraine Analyst.

William B. Taylor, Jr.

William B. Taylor, Jr. joined USIP in October 2009 as Vice President, Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations. A graduate of West Point and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, he has served in posts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. Most recently, Bill Taylor was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. Prior to that assignment, he was the U.S. government’s representative to the Mideast Quartet, which facilitated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.  He served in Baghdad as director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office from 2004 to 2005, and in Kabul as coordinator of international and U.S. assistance to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003.  Ambassador Taylor was also a coordinator of U.S. assistance to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. As an infantry platoon leader and company commander in the U.S. Army, he served in Vietnam and Germany.

Leon Aron

Leon Aron was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union in June 1978 at the age of twenty-four. In addition to writing Russian Outlook, AEI’s quarterly essay on the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet evolution, Mr. Aron has contributed numerous articles on Russian affairs to leading U.S. and Russian newspapers and magazines. Among the topics he has covered are the political, economic, and ideological factors shaping Russian foreign policy and U.S.-Russian relations and the social, political, and economic facets of "Putinism." Mr. Aron’s frequent television and radio interviews range from CBS News’s 60 Minutes, to NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. He is the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 (AEI Press, 2007). He is currently working on a book about the ideas and ideals that inspired and shaped the latest Russian revolution (1987-91).

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