2008 Annual Conference

Mr. Hamilton will speak on the subject of the future of American involvement in Iraq and the Middle East. He will address the current state of affairs in Iraq. What the United States can do to improve the situation. How the next president should apply all the tools of American power.

The challenges the next president will face, and the importance of engaging and respecting the American people in the conduct of foreign policy

A roundtable comprised of expert panelists who will engage in discussion with Mr. Hamilton immediately after his keynote

Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Mr. Hamilton represented Indiana's 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee Hamilton was a primary draftsman of several House ethics reforms.

Mr. Hamilton served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. He served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project established to monitor implementation of the Commission's recommendations. He is currently a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director's Advisory Board, the CIA Director's Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary's National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.

Mr. Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and Indiana University law school, and studied for a year at Goethe University in Germany. Before his election to Congress, he practiced law in Chicago and Columbus, Indiana. Lee and his wife, the former Nancy Ann Nelson, have three children: Tracy Lynn Souza, Deborah Hamilton Kremer, and Douglas Nelson Hamilton, and five grandchildren: Christina, Maria, McLouis, and Patricia Souza, and Lina Ying Kremer.