Helena Cobban named CNI/CNIF Executive Director
Posted October 19, 2009
Washington, D.C., October 21, 2009 — The Council for the National Interest and its affiliated Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNI/CNIF) are pleased to announce that Ms. Helena Cobban has joined the organizations as Executive Director.
CNI/CNIF, founded by former Congressman Paul Findley in 1989, works to promote fair policies in the Middle East and truly fair and balanced discussion of those policies here in the United States. It works for broad American interests in the Middle East.
The CNIF board chair Amb. Robert Keeley and CNI’s chair, former Congressman Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), welcomed Cobban’s appointment as Executive Director
CNI/CNIF President Eugene Bird said, “Helena’s distinguished record of writing about the Middle East, in The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere, her dedication to winning a just resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute, and her known speaking and management skills will all be great assets for CNI/CNIF.” As the longtime CNI/CNIF President, Eugene Bird plans to continue as President only until the middle of 2010. He will continue work on an international foreign policy center on Capitol Hill for global NGOs from around the world.
Cobban said, “Gene Bird, the people at CNI/CNIF, and the many small donors who have sustained their work over the years have all done an excellent job. Now, working together, we’re planning to take CNI/CNIF to a new level of putting the true interests of the American people front and center in the Middle East.”
She added, “I see a great chance, right now, to build a strong, nationwide constituency here in America to push our government to pursue the only kind of Mideast diplomacy that can really serve the cause of peace, and the true interests of the American people: a fair-minded diplomacy that takes everyone’s needs into account.”
She noted the emergence in recent years of several new, pro-peace organizations: “These organizations are in the Christian, the Muslim and the Jewish communities, amongst Arab-Americans, and people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Gene Bird and I are looking forward to working with all these partners as we build on the strong desire most Americans have for a fair and stable peace in the Middle East.”
At the end of October, Ms. Cobban will be co-leading one of the biannual small-group tours that CNI/CNIF organizes to Israel and its Arab neighbors, the “political pilgrimages.” The other co-leader will be Ambassador Jack Matlock, who was President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Moscow, 1987-91. In that position, Matlock helped fashion Reagan’s policies in the last years of the Cold War. He has been widely lauded for helping ensure a “soft landing” for Russia and other formerly Soviet states as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Ambassador Matlock’s latest book, Superpower Illusions, will be published by Yale University Press in early December.
On November 17, Matlock, Cobban, and other “political pilgrims” will be reporting back on their findings at a gala dinner hosted by CNI/CNIF aboard the S.S. Odyssey, a Potomac River dinner cruise ship.
Further details of this event are available by calling Ellen Hunt at 202-863-2951, X301, or emailing her at: Ellen@cnionline.org.
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Bio on Helena Cobban
On October 16, Helena Cobban was appointed as Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, effective October 21. Previously, she was a writer, researcher and program organizer on global affairs. She had a long relationship with The Christian Science Monitor: she worked as Beirut-based regional correspondent for the paper, 1976-81, and contributed a regular column on Middle Eastern and other global issues to it, 1990-2007. She has written for many other outlets including the Sunday Times (London), The Nation (New York), ForeignPolicy.com, the BBC, and Boston Review, where she is a Contributing Editor. Four of the seven books she has published since 1984 have been on different aspects of the Arab-Israeli issue. Since 2003 she has published the well-regarded blog on international affairs, “Just World News”. She was co-director of Search for Common Ground’s Middle East Initiative, 1991-1993. She sits on the Middle East Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch and is one of two Quakers who are members of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Cobban speaks French and Arabic. She is married to U. of Virginia professor William B. Quandt and has three adult children.
