Hugh Hewitt ââ?¬â?? New York Times best-selling author, nationally syndicated Talk Radio host and Blogger Extraordinaire ââ?¬â?? fears the conservative values and goals supported by most Americans could be jeopardized by the results of the 2006 congressional elections. But he also sees an opportunity to cement a permanent Republican majority in Congress that wins the War on Terrorism, reforms out-of-control federal spending, confirms conservative judges and ends liberal obstructionism. Which will it be? And what role will conservative principles play in defining the landscape?

Hewitt’s daily Talk Radio program is aired nationally by Salem Communications, and his blog is among the most widely read in the Blogosphere.

Date: March 30, 2006
Time: 11:00 a.m.

Speaker(s):
Hugh Hewitt
Bestselling author and Talk Radio Host

Fred Barnes
Executive Editor,
The Weekly Standard

and

Bob Beckel
FOX News Analyst and
Democratic Campaign Expert

Host(s):
Rebecca Hagelin
Vice President,
Communications and Marketing,
The Heritage Foundation

Mark Tapscott
Director,
Center for Media and Public Policy,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Earlier this month during President Bush’s visit to South Asia, the United States and India reached an unprecedented nuclear cooperation agreement. While Congress debates the merits of the controversial deal, India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who led the Indian negotiating team, is visiting Washington. Please join us as the Foreign Secretary shares his insights into India’s view on the agreement and its impact on bilateral and regional security.

Date: March 30, 2006
Time: 10:00 a.m.

Speaker(s): The Honorable Shyam Saran
Foreign Secretary of India

Host(s):
Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D.
Vice President,
Foreign and Defense Policy Studies,
The Heritage Foundation

As we move further into the 21st century fighting an enemy in a new paradigm, technology has become more important in both defense and national security policy. Before spending billions of dollars on the ââ?¬Å?next best thing,ââ?¬Â it is important to have a strategy in place that smoothly integrates new technologies into a strong national security policy. Has the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security made significant investment into nanotechnology? What applications does nanotechnology have for the defense of the nation? How close are these technologies to performing? Join us as we delve into building a solid national security policy of the future.

Date: March 29, 2006
Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

Speaker(s): Ravi Athale, Ph.D.
Principal Communications Engineer,
Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, MITRE Corporation

James Murday, Ph.D.
Executive Secretary,
Nanoscale Science Engineering and Technology Subcommittee of the
National Science and Technology Council

John Parmentola, Ph.D.
Director for Research and Laboratory Management,
Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology)

Host(s): Alane Kochems
Policy Analyst,
National Security,
The Douglas and Sarah Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies,
The Heritage Foundation

Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) will deliver the second Helms International Diplomacy Lecture on Tuesday night, March 28, at 6:30 p.m. at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Auditorium. His topic with be “A Progress Report on UN Reform.” This program is a project of the Better World Campaign. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky delivered the inaugural Helms Lecture as a joint venture of the Jesse Helms Center and the UN Foundation. We are pleased that Allison Auditorium has been chosen as the site for this year’s address.

Date: March 28, 2006
Time: 6:30 p.m.

Speaker(s):
The Honorable Norm Coleman (R-MN)
United States Senator

Introduction by:
Mark P. Lagon
Deputy Assistant Secretary,
United States Department of State

Host(s): Better World Campaign

Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Auditorium

One of the hottest items on the agenda of both rich and poor countries this year is foreign aid, particularly in light of last year’s announcement at the G8 Meeting at Gleneagles that donor countries would increase aid to help reduce extreme poverty according to the Millennium Development Declaration guidelines. Some have even proposed that rich countries tie the amount of aid given to a percentage of their gross domestic products. But what will more money do this time for the poor that it has not yet done for them in the past? How will the poor benefit from increased aid? Dr. William Easterly will provide some insights into these questions as well as discuss his latest research and its implications on current aid programs.

Dr. William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He also serves as a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. He spent sixteen years as a Research Economist at the World Bank. His areas of expertise are the determinants of long-run economic growth and the effectiveness of foreign aid. He was worked on all continents, but most intensively in Africa, Latin America, and Russia.

Copies of Dr. Easterly’s recent book, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, published earlier this month will be available for purchase and to be signed by the author.

Date: March 28, 2006
Time: 12:00 noon

Speaker(s): Dr. William Easterly
Professor of Economics,
New York University

Host(s): Ana Isabel Eiras
Senior Policy Analyst in International Economics,
Center for International Trade and Economics,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Our program will be the third in our series on whether the United States Military is heading toward a ââ??Hollow Force.ââ?¬Â The term was first used during the period after the Vietnam War when the United States had a large number of soldiers but a level of funding insufficient to maintain the pace of operations, procure equipment, or pay for modernization. Today, the United States operates in a period of strategic uncertainty that requires the Armed Forces to be equipped for countless contingencies. Maintaining a trained and combat-ready force is therefore critical to America’s preparedness for war, but does the military have adequate resources for this to be possible? Investing in equipment and force structure alone will not be enough ââ?‰?? the armed forces must provide improved military education and training programs to sustain their ability to expand and adapt.

Please join us as we continue our Hollow Force series with a discussion of how avoid this problem.

Date: March 27, 2006
Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Speaker(s): Daniel Goure, Ph.D.
Vice President,
The Lexington Institute

Colonel Henry Alden Leonard, USA (Ret.)
Associate Director,
Manpower and Training,
The Rand Corporation’s Arroyo Center

General Dennis Reimer, USA (Ret.)
President,
DFI Government Services, and
Former Army Chief of Staff

Host(s): James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow,
Defense and Homeland Security,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

The era of liberal dominance is finally over, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. Government spending is out of control, huge waves of illegal immigration endanger our security and our American identity, more and more Americans look to Washington for the ââ??quick fix,ââ?¬Â the government grabs for more power at the expense of our liberty, American businesses
are fleeing overseas, and terrorism threatens us more than ever.

How do we deal with these crises when our leaders refuse to? By following the practical six-point plan laid out in Getting America Right. Conservative leaders, Edwin J. Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation and his co-author, Doug Wilson, Chairman of Townhall.com, provide specific steps that every one of us can take to put America back on course. They argue that what will rescue us now are the things that have always made this nation great: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, a strong national defense, and the rule of law.

We must demand accountability and a return to our core principles. What is at risk if we fail? ââ?¬â?? Nothing less than the freedom, prosperity, and security of ourselves and our children and grandchildren. Each and every one of us must get it right. And we need to start today.

Date: March 9, 2006
Time: 1:00 p.m.

Speaker(s):

Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
President,
The Heritage Foundation
Host(s):

Edwin Meese
Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in
Public Policy,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Iran is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, a factor that has made its nuclear weapons program all the more threatening to a wide variety of nations. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, Tehran has seized American diplomats, ordered American hostages to be taken in Lebanon, assassinated Iranian opposition leaders at home and abroad, and supported a stealthy terrorist war against the United States, Israel, and other nations. What are the implications of Iran’s longstanding history of terrorism for the Middle East and for U.S. Policy?

Date: March 8, 2006
Time: 12:00 noon

Speaker(s):

Dr. Christopher Harmon
Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency & Terrorism,
Marine Corps University

Dr. Kenneth Katzman
Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs,
Congressional Research Service

James Phillips
Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs,
Douglas and Sarah Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies,
The Heritage Foundation

Host(s):

Helle Dale
Director,
Douglas and Sarah Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies, and
Deputy Director,
The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Insitute for International Studies,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:

Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Following September 11, politicians of both major parties resolutely asserted America’s national unity. Today, the rhetorical illusions of unity have given way to divisive oversimplifications of Red vs. Blue electoral maps. In Divided We Fall: Family Discord and the Fracturing of America, Bryce Christensen offers a more nuanced yet more disturbing picture of American disunity ââ?‰?? a disunity both social and political, both public and personal. Deeper than the disagreements that separate voter from voter, this disunity increasingly separates man from woman, husband from wife, parent from child, grandparent from grandchild, and sibling from sibling.

Christensen explores the cross-cutting tensions surrounding these fissures. Finding ways to bridge such fissures, he argues, takes on particular urgency because of the mounting costs of family disintegration ââ?¬â?? social and legal, cultural and psychological. Additionally, pragmatic government responses to pressing social needs are no substitute for deeper probing into the cultural causes of these needs. Continued reliance on government to compensate for family failure will make matters worse in the long run. While family failure puts ever more burdens on government, his analysis shows how such failure withers the selfless civic impulses that sustain any healthy government.

BRYCE J. CHRISTENSEN is Assistant Professor of Composition in the English Department of Southern Utah University. He is also the author of Utopia Against the Family and many articles on cultural and literary issues in various scholarly journals.

Date: March 7, 2006
Time: 12:30 p.m.

Speaker(s): Bryce J. Christensen
Author

Host(s): Patrick J. Fagan
William H.G. FitzGerald Research Fellow in
Family and Cultural Issues,
The Richard and Helen DeVos
Center for Religion and Civil Society,
The Heritage Foundation

Details:

Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Russian energy policy took on a new dimension in January when the natural gas supplied to Ukraine was suddenly cut-off over a longstanding contract dispute between the two countries. Though the flow of gas would eventually be restored, the episode highlighted the new found clout Moscow enjoys with not only its immediate neighbors, but also the whole of Western Europe. In the days of the Soviet Union, it was Moscow’s military strength that the world came to fear. 15 years after the end of the cold war, a new economic weapon has emerged in the Russian arsenal ââ?‰?? oil and gas.

This panel discussion, highlighting The Russia Foreign Energy Policy Report Series that is being currently published in London, will establish the confluence of Russian foreign policy with the acquisition of foreign energy assets by Russian entities. The series focuses on nine specific country profiles in such areas as oil, gas, electricity, and nuclear power industries. Each report written by an author of international standing, explains how Russian foreign energy downstream mergers and acquisitions are transpiring to consolidate the newly acquired Russian influence. Join us on March 2nd as we examine the implications of Russian energy policy, including energy asset acquisitions in countries such as Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Bulgaria.

Date: March 2, 2006
Time: 12:00 noon

Speaker(s):

Dr. Margarita M. Balmaceda
Associate,
Harvard University’s Davis Center for
Russian and Eurasian Studies and
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and Associate Professor,
The Whitehead School of
Diplomacy and International Relations,
Seton Hall University

Dr. Stephen J. Blank
Research Professor,
U.S. Army War College

Dr. Ariel Cohen
Senior Research Fellow in
Russian and Eurasian Studies and
International Energy Security,
Douglas and Sarah Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies,
The Heritage Foundation

Adnan Vatansever
Associate Fellow,
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security

Moderator

Andrew Kuchins
Senior Associate,
Russia and Eurasia Program,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Host(s): The Heritage Foundation

Details:

Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium