With the media hacking scandals on both sides of the Atlantic, raising serious questions about global ethical standards in journalism, Simon Cohen, from the UK, explores a new paradigm of communications, and challenges the conventional wisdom that good news doesn't sell. He points to a new, humanizing model for communications - Communications with Conscience - which he argues can be a source of profit for a mainstream media sector in crisis, and a source of hope for tackling our planet's most pressing problems. Cohen challenges us to join a noble war on error, look behind the headlines of the media hacking scandal, and look to ourselves for the most inspiring media of all. Love and compassion, he says, is the ultimate competitive advantage in an otherwise murky media world.

How should the United States deal with the jihadist challenge and other religious imperatives that permeate today's geopolitical landscape? Religion, Terror, and Error: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Challenge of Spiritual Engagement argues that what is required is a longer‐term strategy of cultural engagement, backed by a deeper understanding of how others view the world and what important to them. The means by which that can be accomplished are the subject of this book.

This work achieves three important goals. It shows how religious considerations can be incorporated into the practice of U.S. foreign policy; offers a successor to the rational‐actor model of decision‐making that has heretofore excluded "irrational" factors like religion; and suggests a new paradigm for U.S. leadership in anticipation of tomorrow's multipolar world. In describing how the United States should realign itself to deal more effectively with the causal factors underlying religious extremism, this innovative treatise explains how existing capabilities can be redirected to respond to the challenge and identifies additional capabilities that will be needed to complete the task.

Dr. Douglas M. Johnston is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has served in senior positions in both the public and private sectors. Among his government assignments, he was deputy assistant secretary of the navy; director of policy planning and management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and planning officer with the President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. He has taught courses in international affairs and security at Harvard and was the founder and director of the university’s Executive Program in National and International Security. Dr. Johnston is a Captain in the Naval Reserve and, at the age of 27, was the youngest officer in the navy to qualify for command of a nuclear submarine.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Johnston served as Executive Vice President and COO of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Among his many duties in that capacity, he chaired the Center’s Preventive Diplomacy Program and its Maritime Studies Program. He also directed the CSIS project on Religion and Conflict Resolution. His publications include Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (a seminal work now in its fifteenth printing); Foreign Policy into the 21^st Century: the U.S. Leadership Challenge; Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik; and Religion, Terror, and Error: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Challenge of Spiritual Engagement.

Dr. Johnston's hands-on experience in the political/military arena coupled with his work in preventive diplomacy, has guided the work of ICRD since its inception. In 2007, he received The Founding Spirit Award for Faith by The Washington Times at its 25^th anniversary celebration and in 2008 was identified in a leading Christian journal as “The Father of Faith-based Diplomacy.”

Considerable effort has been devoted to understanding the process of violent Islamist radicalization, but far less research has explored the equally important process of deradicalization, or how individuals or groups abandon extremist groups and ideologies. Proactive measures to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and to rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism have been implemented, to varying degrees, in several Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and European countries. A key question is whether the objective of these programs should be disengagement (a change in behavior) or deradicalization (a change in beliefs) of militants.

Ambassador Chamberlin begins with giving her perspective on 9/11 and how she interacted with president Mosharaf in that era. She believes “Mosharaf saw domestic terrorism as the number one obstacle to developing Pakistan; that Pakistan was the victim of internal terrorism, and he would never be able to break this terrorism as long as the Al-Qaeda problem and Afghanistan persisted”. Ambassador Chamebrlin then talks more about the relationship between Pakistan and USA right after 9/11.

On September 15, 2001, USA and Pakistan began a dialogue over terrorism. Pakistani president, Parvez Mosharaf, was careful not to make conditions although there were clearly understood to be conditions by USA. “It was a very productive exchange and negotiation that we got to yes very quickly,” Ambassador Chamberlin says.  For Pakistan, internal security was the major obstacle to attracting foreign investment and Pakistan needed foreign investment in order to develop the economy.  “At no time did they ever consider any other threat but India to be the existential threat against Pakistan. They never fully accepted that there was not Pakistan’s interest [having] a friendly government in Afghanistan ties to the Taliban,” she continues.

Ambassador Wendy J. Chamberlin is President of the Middle East Institute since March 2007. A 29-year veteran of the US Foreign Service, she was US Ambassador to Pakistan from 2001 to 2002. During her tenure in Islamabad, she played a key role in Pakistan’s cooperation for the US-led campaign against al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Chamberlin has extensive experience in counter-terrorism, having served as Director of Global Affairs and Counter-Terrorism at the National Security Council (1991-1993) and as Deputy in the Bureau of International Counter-Narcotics and Law Programs (1999-2001). As Assistant Administrator in the Asia-Near East Bureau for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2002 to 2004, Ambassador Chamberlin directed civilian reconstruction programs in Iraq and Afghanistan and development assistance programs in the Middle East and East Asia. Other assignments included US Ambassador to the Laos People’s Democratic Republic (1996-1999), Director of Press and Public Affairs for the Near East Bureau (1991-1993), Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur (1993-1996), Arab-Israeli Affairs (1982-1984) and other postings in Morocco, Pakistan, Malaysia, Laos and Zaire.

Tom Block spoke on his forthcoming book, "Shalom/Salaam: A Story of a Mystical Fraternity" (Fons Vitae Publisher, Louisville, KY, 2010) , which traces the virtually unknown story of Islamic mystical influence on the development of Jewish mysticism for over 1000 years. Mr. Block's introduced this story, exploring how Jewish thinkers and mystics, from Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) in Egypt to the Kabbalists in Spain (13th century) and the Holy Land (15th century), turned to their Islamic cousins for spiritual inspiration, as well as specific manners of understanding the relationship with the Divine. These medieval Jewish thinkers irrevocably turned Jewish worship, meditation and synagogue practice in the direction of their Islamic cousins. By the 18th century, when the Baal Shem Tov was developing Hasidism in eastern Europe, he was attracted to the same medieval Jewish thinkers who had, in turn, depended so much on Islam for inspiration. Although he didn't realize it, his interest in specific medieval Jewish thinkers and systems of thought continued the "Islamicization" of Jewish worship, an influence which still reverberates through Jewish practice to this day.

The Rumi Forum presented "Can Islam and Modernity be Reconciled?" with Dr. Shireen T. Hunter, Visiting Professor at the ACMCU at Georgetown University.

This question has preoccupied both Muslims and non-Muslims for more than a century, and has elicited sharply contradictory responses.The  editor and contributing authors to the " Reformist Voices of Islam : Mediating Islam and Modernity" argue that the two are not irreconcilable, and that a Reformist reading of Islamic sources provides the right medium to satisfy Muslim societies need to accomodate modernity while retaining their cultural identity and values.

Shireen T. Hunter is Visiting Professor at the Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. From September 2005 until February 2007 she was a Visiting Fellow at the center where she conducted research on reformist Islam, a project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She is also Distinguished Scholar( Non –Resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., with which she has been associated since 1983 (Director of the Islam Program, 1998-2005; Senior Associate, 1993-97; and Deputy Director of the Middle East Program, 1983-92).  She is Consultant to the RAND Corporation; and she was Academic Fellow at Carnegie Corporation (2000-2002). From 1993-97, Dr. Hunter was Visiting Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, and also directed CEPS' Mediterranean Program.   While at CSIS in the 1980s, she also taught courses as Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown University, Adjunct Professor at George Mason University, and holder of the Louis L. Goldstein Chair at Washington College (1989). Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Hunter was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution(1979-1980)  Research Fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs (CFIA).  From 1966-1978, she was a member of the Iranian Foreign Service, serving abroad in London and Geneva. Dr. Hunter was educated at Teheran University (BA and all-but-thesis for a doctorate in international law), the London School of Economics (MSc in international relations), and the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva (PhD in international relations).

H.E. Ihsanoglu talked about how President Obama’s Turkey and Cairo speeches affected the Muslim world. He noted that, “The Obama speech has opened a new horizon and relation between the Muslim world and America.” Dr. Ihsanoglu stated that Obama’s speeches portrayed the aspects of the Muslim world in a positive way.

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Srdjan Darmanović was born on July 18, 1961 in Cetinje, Montenegro. He Graduated in October 1985 in the Faculty of Political Science (division: International Relations) University of Belgrade. He holds an M.A. from June 1994 in the same Faculty of Political Science University of Belgrade with the thesis “Contemporary Liberal Theories on the Break of Real-socialism”. He also holds a PhD from October 2002 with the doctoral dissertation ”Democratic Transitions and Consolidations in Southern and Eastern Europe” defended in the Law Faculty at the University of Montenegro.

During his university career, Prof. Dr. Darmanović worked firstly as a young fellow, then an assistant professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Montenegro teaching subjects on Comparative Politics and Political Theories. He was the Head of the Department of Political Science in the Law Faculty from its very onset in September 2003 until the Department had been transferred to the Faculty of Political Science in May 2006.

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović held the position of first dean of the Faculty of Political Science from its very establishment in May 2006. He was then promoted into associate professor in June 2008. He taught the following courses at the Faculty of Political Science: Introduction to Political Science, Comparative Politics, Parties and party systems in basic studies (bachelor level), as well as courses: Political System of Montenegro and Comparative Transitions in postgraduate studies (MA level).

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović became Ambassador of Montenegro to the United States on December 7, 2010. From June 2005 he is a Member of the Venice Commission (International Commission for Democracy through Law) of the Council of Europe. He is the Founder and President of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), a think tank based in Podgorica, Montenegro. He was the Representative (National Coordinator) of Montenegro in the UN Alliance of Civilizations from June 2008 until April 2010. He is a Member of the Montenegrin National Council for European Integrations (NCEI) from its establishment in 2008, representing the University of Montenegro.

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović is the president of the Council of Montenegrin Diplomatic Academy from 2006. During 1990, he was active in Montenegrin and federal (FRY) politics. He is the former vice-president of the Social-democratic Party of Montenegro (1993-1996) and a former member of the lower house of the federal parliament of FRY (1992-1996).

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović is the author of two books: Malformed Democracy (1993) and Real-socialism: Anatomy of Collapse (1996). He has co-author several books, Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia – Institutional Framework (2003); Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia – Civil Society and Political Culture (2004); Referendum in Montenegro 2006 (2007); Electoral Legislation and Elections in Montenegro 1990-2006 (2007).

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović is a correspondent in many international magazines for political science, including: Journal of Democracy (Washington DC, USA), East European Constitutional Review, (Budapest-New York) and Sudost Europa (Munich, Germany).  He was a columnist in former Belgrade daily Naša Borba (1990-1997) and in the Montenegrin weekly Monitor (1994-2003).

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović is a former member of the international study group at the Aspen Institute that published the report/book "Future of the Balkans" (working sessions: Berlin-Sarajevo-Istanbul 1997-98). He has participated in a number of international conferences, seminars, symposiums, round tables and similar gatherings in Montenegro and abroad, including all six conferences of the World Movement for Democracy, mostly supported and sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy Washington DC, and several round tables and seminars organized by CSIS and the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC.

Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović has testified twice (1998 and 2000) as an expert before Helsinki Commission of the US Congress. Ambassador Prof. Dr. Darmanović is fluent in English and has reading knowledge of Russian. He is a candidate for a master in chess.

Rumi's poetry is widely considered one of the great masterpieces of Islamic literatures, and Rumi is now the best-selling poet in America. This talk will serve as a deep introduction to Rumi's masterpiece, by taking the audience inside the main teachings and structure of the Masnavi. No background or language is necessary.

Dr. Omid Safi is a leading public Muslim intellectual in America.   He is a Professor of Islamic Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in contemporary Islamic thought and classical Islam. He is the past Chair for the Study of Islam and the current Chair for the Islamic Mysticism Group at the American Academy of Religion, the largest international organization devoted to the academic study of religion.

Omid is an award-winning teacher and speaker, and was nominated six times at Colgate University for the "Professor of the Year" award, and before that twice at Duke University for the Distinguished Lecturer award.  At the University of North Carolina, he received the award for mentoring minority students in 2009, and the Sitterson Teaching Award for Professor of the Year in April of 2010.

He is the editor of the volume Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). His work Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam, dealing with medieval Islamic history and politics, was published by UNC Press in 2006. His Voices of Islam: Voices of Change, was published by Praeger in 2006. His last book was published by HarperCollins, titled Memories of Muhammad, and deals with the biography and legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.  He has a forthcoming volume from Princeton University Press on the famed mystic Rumi. The Carnegie Foundation recognized Omid as a leading Scholar of Islam in 2007-2008 for studying contemporary Islamic debates in Iran. That topic will be the topic of his next book from Harvard University Press. His volume on American Islam is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.