Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

Amna Nawaz

June 10, 2023

Topic: On the Frontlines: Reporting Overseas and Here at Home

Amna Nawaz serves as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. Prior to joining PBS NewsHour in April 2018, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as foreign correspondent and Islamabad Bureau Chief at NBC News. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, built in 2014, to elevate stories from America’s fastest-growing and most diverse population.

At the NewsHour, Nawaz has reported from the White House, across the country, and around the world on a range of topics including politics, immigration, foreign affairs, education, gun violence, criminal justice reform, the climate, culture, and sports. She also serves as an NBC News and MSNBC political contributor.

Throughout her career, she has covered major events such as the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol; the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas; the elections and inaugurations of President Joe Biden, President Donald J. Trump, and President Barack Obama; Hurricane Katrina; the 2010 Haiti earthquake; the U.S. war in Afghanistan; and the September 11th attacks.

Nawaz has interviewed multiple heads of state and international leaders including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. She has interviewed government officials including Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, ICE Director Mark Morgan, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and VA Secretary Denis McDonough. She has interviewed a variety of newsmakers including acclaimed director Ava Duvernay, actor Riz Ahmed, WNBA star Sue Bird, and country singer Reba McEntire.

On January 6, 2021, Nawaz reported live for several hours from outside the U.S. Capitol building as it was under attack, part of a NewsHour team honored with a Peabody Award for its coverage.

Nawaz previously won a Peabody for her documentary work on 2019’s “The Plastic Problem,” examining global plastic pollution and efforts to address it. Her other documentaries include “Raising the Future,” a 2021 documentary on America’s childcare crisis; and 2022’s “Life After Lockup,” which followed the lives of four formerly-incarcerated people to track the challenges of re-entry after prison.

In 2020, Nawaz hosted a criminal justice podcast, “Broken Justice,” which was named a finalist for the Silver Gavel Awards, honoring work that fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system. She also hosted 2021’s “The Longest Year,” a pandemic-focused podcast series on the many ways Covid-19 changed Americans’ lives. Nawaz has hosted three seasons of the primetime PBS series, “Beyond the Canvas,” featuring profiles and interviews of some of the world’s leading artists, musicians, and creators. 

In 2019, Nawaz became the first Asian American and the first Muslim American to moderate a presidential debate. While at ABC News, Nawaz hosted the documentary, “Roberts County: A Year in the Most Pro-Trump Town,” following four families’ lives over President Trump’s first year in office. She also hosted the podcast series, “Uncomfortable” for ABC News Radio, featuring in-depth, one-on-one conversations with thought leaders on the issues dividing America. While at NBC News, she was the first foreign journalist to gain access to North Waziristan – then the global hub of Al Qaida and the Taliban – while pregnant with her first daughter.

Nawaz was a Fall 2021 Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, and the Inter-American Dialogue. In 2022, Nawaz was the recipient of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies’ Vision Award and the Media Award from the Muslim Affairs Public Council’s Media Award. She has also been honored with the American Muslim Institution’s Excellence in Media Award in 2018 and an Emmy award as part the 2009 NBC News Special “Inside the Obama White House.”

She is the first-generation American daughter of Pakistani parents, born and raised in Virginia. Nawaz earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she captained the varsity field hockey team and studied abroad at the University of Zimbabwe. She later earned her master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

She lives with her husband, Paul, and their two daughters in the Washington, D.C. area.

Thomas Ricks

July 10, 2023

Topic: First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

Thomas Ricks is an American journalist and author who specializes in the military and national security issues. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. Until the end of 1999 he had the same beat at the Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for 17 years.

While at the Wall Street Journal, he was part of the team writing the “Price of Power” series discussing United States defense spending and potential changes confronting the US military following the Cold War. The series won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He won a second Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as part of The Washington Post team for reporting about the beginnings of the U.S. counteroffensive against terrorism.

Ricks has reported on military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He previously wrote a blog for Foreign Policy called “The Best Defense” and he is a member of the Center for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank.

Ricks lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University’s Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. Ricks is the author of several nonfiction books including Making the Corps (1997); the bestselling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) and its follow-up, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008 (2009); the bestselling First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (2020); and Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (2022).

Born in Massachusetts, Ricks grew up in New York and Afghanistan and graduated from Yale in 1977.

Ambassador Charles Ray

August 14, 2023

Topic: The Future of Democracy in Africa

Ambassador Charles A. Ray, a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe. In addition, he was the first U.S. Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, opening the Consulate General there in 1998.

From 2006 to 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, responsible for DoD efforts to account for those missing in combat from World War II to the then current conflicts and for policy related to the rescue of personnel who become isolated, missing, or taken in service abroad.

During his diplomatic career, Mr. Ray served as deputy chief of mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and at consular posts in Guangzhou and Shenyang, China, and Chiang Mai, Thailand. He was diplomat-in-residence at the University of Houston during the 2005-2006 academic year; responsible for outreach and recruiting at colleges and universities in South Texas.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1982, he served 20 years in the United States Army, with postings in Europe and Asia, including two tours in Vietnam during the war. He retired in 2012 from the Foreign Service and is now engaged in consulting, public speaking, and writing. He is the author of more than 30 works of fiction and nonfiction, including a historical series about the Buffalo Soldiers, the African-American soldiers who served on the western frontier, and is the author of an Amazon best-selling mountain man adventure series. His nonfiction works include books and articles on management, leadership, international relations, and history. He is the author of over 250 works of fiction and nonfiction.

Ray is currently a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Diplomacy, communications director for the Association of Black American Ambassadors, a member of the American College of National Security Leaders, a member of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the board of directors of the Cold War Museum.

In addition to his government service, Mr.Ray has worked as a newspaper/magazine journalist, photographer, and artist, and was editorial cartoonist for the Spring Lake (NC) News, a weekly newspaper in central North Carolina during most of the mid to late-1970s.

He has a B.S. in business administration from Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas; an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California; and an M.S. in national security strategy from the National Defense University. In 2001, he received the Thomas Jefferson Award from American Citizens Abroad (ACA) for his work in support of American business in southern Vietnam.

Ambassador Ronald Lehman

Monday, October 9, 2023

Topic: The Importance of STEM to U.S. National Security

The Honorable Ronald F. Lehman II is the Counselor to the Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).   For many years, he was the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at LLNL.

Ambassador Lehman has been the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy in the Department of Defense, Ambassador and Chief Negotiator on Strategic Offensive Arms (START I), and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He has also served on the National Security Council staff as a Senior Director, in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary, on the Senior Professional Staff of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and served in Vietnam as a commissioned officer in the United States Army. In the past he has served as the Chair of the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC), on the Presidential Advisory Board on Proliferation Policy, on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, as chair of the NATO High Level Group, on the governing board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and as a U.S. representative to a number of United Nations disarmament and review conferences.

Ambassador Lehman co-chaired (with David Franz) the National Academy of Sciences’ study on the future of Cooperative Threat Reduction and formerly co-chaired (with Ash Carter) the Policy Advisory Group on nonproliferation for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was on the Defense Science Board Task Forces on Globalization and Security, on Tritium, on Global Strike, and on Defense against Biological Weapons. He is served on the National Research Council Committee on U.S. Air Force Strategic Deterrence Military Capabilities in the 21st Century and served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Health Aspects of the Foreign Policy Agenda of the United States and on its Committee on Alternative Technologies to Replace Anti-Personnel Landmines. He was detailed to the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration as counterterrorism coordinator after the September 11, 2001, attacks. For the Department of Energy he was the U.S.-Snezhinsk Working Group Co-Chair for the Joint Russian-American Steering Committee on the Nuclear Cities Initiative. He served on the advisory panel for USSTRATCOM’s Global Innovation and Strategy Center. He was on the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on the U.S. Nuclear Posture. He was a Public Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.

He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University (1975) and his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College (1968).