Upcoming Socrates Moderators

2012 Socrates Winter Seminars
February 17-20, 2012
Aspen, CO
 

Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in the both the US and UK for the past 30 years. He is the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC.  FOSI’s mission is to make the online world safer for kids and their families.  FOSI convenes the top thinkers and practitioners in government, industry and the nonprofit sectors to collaborate and innovate and to create a “culture of responsibility” in the online world. Prior to FOSI, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) and lead a team which developed the world’s leading content labeling system on the web.  While with ICRA, Stephen served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) in 2000 and was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers, Internet Magazine, 2001.

In 1994, Stephen was named the first Executive Director of the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) which created a unique self-labeling system for computer games and then, in 1996, Stephen launched RSACi – a forerunner to the ICRA website labeling system.  For his efforts in online safety, Stephen was given the 1998 Carl Bertelsmann Prize in Gutersloh, Germany, for innovation and responsibility in the Information Society and was invited to the first and subsequent White House Internet Summits during the Clinton Administration.

Stephen’s other positions include the Executive Director of the National Stepfamily Association (UK); General Secretary of the Islington Voluntary Action Council; Executive Director of Camden Community Transport as well as management positions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Inter-Action.  Stephen’s first job was with Burroughs Machines (now Unisys) and he had a spell working for West Nally Ltd – a sports sponsorship PR company.

Stephen received a BA, magna cum laude, in Psychology from University College, Cardiff, Wales in 1977.  A native of Washington, DC, Stephen spent many years in the UK and now has dual citizenship.  He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and has been interviewed by leading newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, radio and in the mainstream press.  He has given presentations and spoken in16 countries on 4 continents. 

Mark Brownstein is Chief Counsel of the Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund.  Mark specializes in utility-related issues, including transmission development, wholesale and retail electric market design, rate reform, and power plant siting and investment.  Mark leads EDF’s team on coal and natural gas. Mark is also adjunct Professor of Energy Policy at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Mark was one of two EDF staff leads on the United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of the nation’s leading corporations and environmental groups championing immediate action on federal legislation to cap and substantially reduce greenhouse gas pollution across the US economy.  He is co-author of the Carbon Principles, a set of enhanced due diligence principles for investment banks considering the financing of coal fired power plants.

Prior to joining Environmental Defense Fund, Mark was Director of Enterprise Strategy for Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), where he worked directly with PSEG’s senior leadership in crafting and implementing the corporation’s business strategy. Over his nearly ten year career with PSEG, Mark served the company in a variety of environmental management roles, including Director of Environmental Strategy and Policy. Mark was active in numerous environmental legislative and regulatory proceedings including efforts to develop federal legislation limiting emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide from power plants, and the Environmental Council of States’ (ECOS) 37-state Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG) process, which developed specific recommendations to address the persistent problem of ozone transport in the eastern United States. Mark was also an active member of the US EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and New Jersey’s Renewable Energy Task Force.

Aside from PSEG, Mark’s career includes time as an attorney in private environmental practice, a regulator with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and an aide to then-Congressman Robert G. Torricelli (D–NJ).

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune and her columns appear in several other publications across the world. She is a frequent media guest analyst. During the 18-day revolution that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, she appeared on most major media outlets, leading the feminist website Jezebel to describe her as “The Woman Explaining Egypt to the West”. Newsweek magazine said she was “in demand as a fresh, female counterweight to all the white-bearded professorial types.”

Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Mona was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. Ms Eltahawy was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel. Her public speaking has taken her around the world, including to the first TEDWomen where she spoke about the virtues of confusion in breaking stereotypes of Muslim women.

In 2010 the Anna Lindh Foundation awarded her its Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism and the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver gave her its Anvil of Freedom Award. In 2009, the European Union awarded her its Samir Kassir Prize for Freedom of the Press for her opinion writing and Search for Common Ground named her a winner of its Eliav-Sartawi Award for Middle Eastern Journalism. Mona is a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She has taught as an adjunct at the New School in New York, the University of Oklahoma and the U.N.-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica.

Mona was born in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family.

Socrates International
Madrid, Spain
April 19-22, 2012

Clive Crook is senior editor of The Atlantic and a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, a former chief Washington commentator of the Financial Times, and was previously with The Economist.

Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. The Chicago Tribune has named him one of the “10 Best Magazine Journalists in America” and the LA Times called him “the nation’s most widely-read and influential legal commentator.” Mr. Rosen is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Supreme Court: The personalities and rivalries that defined America. He is a Brookings Institution Fellow and is considered one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States. Mr. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.