Robin Wright has reported from more than a 140 countries on six continents for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs and others. She has been a fellow at Yale, Duke, Stanford, Brookings, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and The U.S. Institute of Peace. Her latest book is Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World (Simon and Schuster, 2011). The L.A. Times said of Rock the Casbah: “Anyone seeking deeper understanding of the Arab Spring needs to read Wright’s formidably well-informed book.”

Rami Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen whose family resides in Beirut and Nazareth. He is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, as well as a columnist at the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. He is an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Dubai School of Government. In November 2006 he was the co-recipient of the Pax Christi International Peace Award for his efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to the Middle East. He was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University in 2001-02, and recently served for four years on the international advisory board of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He has a BA in political science and MSc in journalism from Syracuse University.