Plenary Speakers
NEIL ARYA
Neil Arya is founding Director of the Global Health Office Schulich School of Medicine University of Western Ontario. He is also an assistant clinical professor of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and adjunct professor of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario and adjunct in both Health Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Arya has also served as president of Physicians for Global Survival and Vice President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and has been involved in projects in Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia and as part of the Peace through Health group at McMaster University, co-edited Peace through Health with Joanna Santa Barbara, published by Kumarian Press last year.
Janet Johnson Bryant is a journalist. Much of the time she worked for the Catholic radio station, Radio Veritas in Monrovia, Liberia. Her beat was the Executive Mansion, occupied by Charles Taylor, who had a virtual stranglehold over the media. Journalists were often openly bribed during press conferences. She also hosted a radio show about women’s issues. Bryant’s efforts to expose corruption during Taylor’s regime earned her the nickname “Iron Lady of Media.”
Janet met the women of WIPNET when she reported on them for a story. She soon became part of their outreach and advocacy program. Like Asatu, she used her position to garner important, strategic information that benefited WIPNET. In particular, Janet helped launch the Liberian Mass Action for Peace. Together with Leymah, Sugars and Asatu she helped draft the first press release calling for an immediate ceasefire and for all warring factions to sit down at the peace table. Janet then broadcast the message announcing the first meeting of the women in the field opposite Taylor’s house – hundreds of women showed up and stayed.
She now lives in Dracut, MA, working towards a new goal: earning a master’s degree in international diplomacy and returning to Liberia.
PAULA GUTLOVE
Paula Gutlove is Deputy Director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, cofounder of the Connectivity to Enhance Global Human Security (CEGHS) initiative, and Project Manager of the U.S. Muslim Engagement Initiative. Dr Gutlove has over 25 years of experience working with people of diverse perspectives and interests, to improve communication, build understanding, resolve conflicts, and promote cooperation. In 1996, she founded the Health Bridges for Peace project, which links health care with the prevention and resolution of inter-communal conflict in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Dr. Gutlove is a founding board member and board chair of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, an Associate of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, and consultant to numerous international organizations including WHO, OSCE and UNHCR. She trained as an oral surgeon at Mt Sinai Hospital, New York, studied at Boston and Cornell Universities, and has had post-doctoral fellowships in peace and conflict studies at Harvard and the Australian National Universities.
Barry S. Levy, M.D., M.P.H., is a physician and epidemiologist, an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, and a consultant in occupational and environmental health. He has written and spoken extensively on the adverse health consequences of war and their prevention. With Victor W. Sidel, M.D., he has co-edited two editions of War and Public Health and the books Terrorism and Public Health and Social Injustice and Public Health, and has co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Levy is a past president of APHA and a former executive director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He is a recipient of several awards, including the Sedgwick Memorial Medal of APHA. The Sidel-Levy Award for Peace of the American Public Health Association each year honors an APHA member who has made outstanding contributions to preventing war and promoting international peace.
Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After earning his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history at Yale University in 1977, his writing has focused on two topics–the political history of the modern Philippines and the covert netherworld of illicit drugs, syndicate crime, and state security.
His first book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York, 1972), sparked controversy over the CIA’s attempt to block its publication, but is now regarded as the “classic” study of global drug trafficking and has been translated into nine languages, most recently Thai and German. His book A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York, 2006), also available in Italian and German editions, provided the historical dimension for the film Taxi to the Darkside (New York, 2007) which won the Oscar in 2008 for “Best Documentary Feature.”
His latest book, Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Madison, 2009), draws together these two strands, covert operations and modern Philippine history, to explore the transformative power of police, information, and scandal in shaping both the modern Philippine state and the U.S. internal security apparatus.
VICTOR SIDEL
Victor W. Sidel, MD, is Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Adjunct Professor of Public Health at the Weill Cornell Medical College. He has been president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the organization that was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize for Peace. With Barry Levy he has co-edited books published by Oxford University Press on the public health aspects of war, of terrorism, and of social injustice. He is currently a member of the national Board of Directors of PSR and the head representative of IPPNW as a civil society (non-governmental) organization at the NYC site of the United Nations.