2005 Regional Policy Symposium Senior Scholar Biographies

Sponsored by the US Department of State, Title VIII Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and The Starr Foundation

Dr. Gary K. Bertsch is the university professor of Public and International Affairs (awarded for "highest recognition of significant impact on the University of Georgia") and founder and director of the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia. Dr. Bertsch has been involved in teaching, research, and service at the University of Georgia since 1969. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the University's Pi Sigma Alpha Teacher of the Year Award. He has also served as a Fulbright Professor in England and an IREX professor in the former Yugoslavia. He served on the board of trustees of The University of Georgia Foundation (1994-2004) and on the board of directors of The University of Georgia Research Foundation (1987-97). He is a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, and is listed in several Who’s Who, including Who’s Who in America. He is also co-founder and co-director of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, an annual award (presented in recent years to President Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Mikhail Gorbachev, United Nations (UN) High Commissioner Sadako Ogata, and President Vaclav Havel). Dr. Bertsch’s research focuses on trade, technology, and strategic issues. He directs projects on nonproliferation and export controls on a global scale. He has authored or edited over 20 books, including: Dangerous Weapons, Desperate States: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (Routledge, 1999); Engaging India: US Strategic Relations with the World’s Largest Democracy (Routledge, 1999); and International Cooperation on Nonproliferation Export Controls (University of Michigan Press, 1994).

Dr. Herbert Ellison is professor of Russian history in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the History Department at the University of Washington. A specialist on the history and politics of Russia, the Soviet Union and the CIS, and on international relations in East Asia, he received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Washington, and his PhD degree from the University of London (the School of Slavonic and East European Studies), followed by post-doctoral study at the University of Leningrad. He is one of the leading figures in American Russian studies. Dr. Ellison has also served as the director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington, as the director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, DC, as a trustee of the National Council for Russian and East European Research, as vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, as a member of the advisory committee of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, as chairman of the board of directors of IREX, and as director of Eurasian Research for the National Bureau of Asian Research. He currently chairs the Academic Council of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and is a member of the board of directors of the National Bureau of Asian Research and a member of the board of managers of the Blakemore Foundation. Dr. Ellison has served as a consultant to the US Department of State and to the foreign affairs committees of the US Congress. He has written, coauthored or edited many books and monogaphs, including History of Russia, Twentieth Century Russia, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, Soviet Policy toward Western Europe, Japan and the Pacific Quadrille, and a large number of book chapters and scholarly articles and reviews. His current book project is a study of the Yeltsin era. He has served as executive producer and chief consultant for two PBS television series: Messengers from Moscow (1995) and Yeltsin (2000).

Dr. Roger Kangas is a specialist on political and security matters in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea basin. Prior to joining the Marshall Center in 1999, Dr. Kangas was the Central Asian course coordinator for the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. From 1996-1998, Dr. Kangas was deputy director of the Central Asian and Caucasus Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Dr. Kangas was a research analyst on Central Asian Affairs for the Open Media Research Institute (OMRI) from 1995-1996. From 1990-1995, he was an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Mississippi. Since 1992, Dr. Kangas has worked with and advised the United States Special Operations Command, CENTCOM, EUCOM, US State Department, USAID, USIA, NATO (ISAF Mission), the OSCE and the UN on issues relating to Central Asia, Afghanistan, as well as Russia and the Southern Caucasus. In addition, he has consulted and written reports for NGOs, private firms and consultant companies on issues relating to the region, including IREX, AED, National Democratic Institute, IFES, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the SMI Group, Russian Petroleum Investors, and Development Alternatives Incorporated. Dr. Kangas graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1985. He earned his PhD in Political Science at Indiana University in 1991. Dr. Kangas has written numerous articles and book chapters on Central Asian politics and society.

Dr. W. Kendall Myers is a special advisor for analyst training and a senior analyst for Europe with a focus on UK/Ireland in the US Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). He is also currently an adjunct professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a position he has held since 1978. Prior to this position, he worked as an assistant professor of European Studies at SAIS. Dr. Myers has also served as the acting director of INR's External Research Office and as the chairman of European Area Studies in the School of Professional and Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute.

Dr. Gilbert Rozman is Musgrave professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1970. He is a Northeast Asianist, beginning with an undergraduate major in Chinese and Russian studies, following with a doctoral dissertation comparing China and Japan, and gradually, since 2000, adding Korean studies. Rozman's most recent books are Northeast Asia's Stunted Regionalism: Bilateral Distrust in the Shadow of Globalization (Cambridge 2004), and a co-edited volume Korea at the Center (M.E. Sharpe, 2005). His comparative sociological interests combine with a focus on national identities and their impact on regional problems such as the nuclear crisis in North Korea.