Our Panelists
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN A DESTABILIZED WORLD
The focus of the 2023 Symposium will be on American foreign policy in a destabilized world.
Hosted by the Department of Political Science and organized by a committee of faculty and alumni, the Royce International Symposium will engage influential experts to reflect on current issues impacting Orange County in a global context.
SPEAKERS
Keynote
Ed Royce (’77)
Policy Director, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck
Ed Royce is a foreign policy, national security and international business problem solver. Unparalleled relationships with U.S. government officials and sovereign leaders.
Ed Royce leverages his exceptional understanding of world trends and high-level relationships with global leaders to creatively solve problems, unlock value and expand market opportunities for clients domestically and internationally. He represented southern Californians in the U.S. House of Representatives for 26 years, chairing the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) from 2013-2019. Ed also served as a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, where he led efforts to enact regulatory reforms impacting insurers, credit unions and housing finance.
Ed is active in promoting strong U.S. development and commercial engagement overseas. He serves on the National Advisory Council of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and on the Development Advisory Council of the Development Finance Corporation.
2024 Panelists
Dr. Heidi Hardt
University of California, Irvine
Prof. Heidi Hardt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. From 2021 to 2022, she was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow (CFR-IAF TIRS) and worked for the State Department (NATO Desk), Senator Van Hollen and Congresswoman Porter. Hardt has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and she is the author of two books:
NATO’s Lessons in Crisis: Institutional Memory in International Organization
(Oxford UP, 2014) and
Time to React: The Efficiency of International Organizations in Crisis Response (Oxford UP, 2018). Her research examines transatlantic security, European security and defense, NATO, the EU and OSCE. Issue areas include crisis management, collective defense, military operations (e.g. Afghanistan), climate security, strategy, learning, adaptation, change, gender (e.g. WPS, DEI) and political and military decision-making.
Dr. Kelechi Kalu
Professor of Political Science
University of California, Riverside
Dr. Kelechi A. Kalu holds a Ph.D. (1997) in International Studies from the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.
His research and teaching interests are in International Politics, African Political Economy and U.S. Africa Relations. He is widely published and has served as a consultant to the World Bank on Public Sector Governance and to the Asian Development Bank on Managing Sustainable Development in Resource-Rich Countries. He is a recipient of grants from The Ford Foundation, The Mershon Center and The Korea Foundation. He is co-editor and contributor of West Africa and the U.S. War on Terror (Routledge, 2013), Territoriality, Citizenship and Peacebuilding: Perspectives on Challenges to Peace in Africa (UK: Adonis and Abbey, 2013) and United States–Africa Security Relations (Routledge, 2014).
Sean K. O’Neill
Foreign Policy Advisor, U.S. Marine Corps
Sean Kotaro O’Neill began his appointment as the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps in July 2023. A member of the Senior Foreign Service, Mr. O’Neill previously served as the U.S. Consul General in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Mr. O’Neill served as a State Department fellow on the staff of the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs during the 114th and 115th Congress, focusing on Indo-Pacific policy and oversight of U.S. government foreign-affairs operations. Earlier in his career, Mr. O’Neill served as a watch officer in the State Department’s Operations Center, briefing the Secretary of State and senior leadership on major events and operations. He is a native New Yorker who worked as a capital markets attorney in New York and Tokyo before joining the Foreign Service in the wake of 9/11. He received a B.A. from Tulane University and a J.D. from Fordham University’s School of Law. In his career, Mr. O’Neill has studied Thai, Chinese, Burmese, Bengali and Japanese.
Dana W. White
Senior Managing Director, Ankura
Dana White is a Senior Managing Director at Ankura and leads the Global Strategic Advisory group, which includes McLarty Associates. She is based in Washington, DC. Previously, Ms. White served as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the Chief Pentagon Spokesperson for the Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis. In that capacity, she provided strategic public relations and media guidance to all branches of the U.S. armed services, combatant commands and their senior military, and civilian and political leadership. She also served as a professional staff member on the Armed Services Committee of the United States Senate under Senator John S. McCain as a foreign policy advisor on his 2008 presidential campaign.
Ms. White graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in East Asian languages and civilizations and studied at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. She is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and French and possesses basic proficiency in Korean.
Dr. Teresa Wright
Professor of Political Science
California State University, Long Beach
Teresa Wright received her B.A. in Political Science at Santa Clara University, and her M.A. and PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1996, she has taught at Cal State Long Beach and served as department chair from 2009-2021. Dr. Wright’s research focuses on state-society relations, protest and dissent, and the relationship between capitalism and democracy—particularly in China and Taiwan. She has worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the East-West Center in Honolulu. From 2012-2022, she served on the Editorial Board of the China Quarterly.
Michael Singh
Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow
The Washington Institute
Michael Singh is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council. During his tenure at the White House from 2005 to 2008, Mr. Singh was responsible for devising and coordinating U.S. national security policy toward the region stretching from Morocco to Iran, with a particular emphasis on Iran’s nuclear and regional activities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, and security cooperation in the broader Middle East. Previously, Mr. Singh served as special assistant to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and at the U.S. embassy in Israel.
Mr. Singh is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace. He is also a member of the Governance Board of the Vandenberg Coalition, and of the National Council of Welcome.US, a national initiative to support refugees co-chaired by former Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, among others. Mr. Singh has written extensively on the Middle East, broader U.S. national security strategy, and the organization and management of the U.S. national security apparatus. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University (Baker Scholar) and a B.A. from Princeton University.
