Aaron David Miller (born March 25,1949) is a Middle East analyst, author, and negotiator. He is on the U.S. Advisory Council of Israel Policy Forum, is Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and has been an advisor to six Secretaries of State. Miller worked within the
United States Department of StateThe United States Department of State, often referred to as the State Department, is the Cabinet-level foreign affairs agency of the United States government, similar to foreign ministries, foreign offices, ministries of external relations, etc. in other countries...
for twenty four years (1978-2003). Between 1988 and 2003, Miller served six secretaries of state as an advisor on Arab-Israeli negotiations, where he participated in American efforts to broker agreements between
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
,
JordanJordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in Western Asia spanning the southern part of the Syrian Desert down to the Gulf of Aqaba. Jordan shares borders with Syria to the north, Iraq to the northeast, Saudi Arabia to the east and south, the Gulf of Aqaba to the southwest,...
,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
, and the Palestinians. He left the Department of State in January 2003 to serve as president of
Seeds of PeaceSeeds of Peace is an international youth organization, founded in 1993, that works to bring together youth from conflict regions to discuss coexistence and conflict resolution.-History:...
, an international youth organization, founded in 1993. In January 2006, he became a public policy scholar at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for ScholarsThe Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , located in Washington, D.C., is a United States Presidential Memorial that was established as part of the Smithsonian Institution by an act of Congress in 1968...
in Washington, DC. Miller published his fourth book,
The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace in 2008.
Personal/Family Background
Miller was born in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
on March 25, 1949, the eldest son of Samuel H. and Ruth Ratner Miller, both known for their civic, political and philanthropic work in the Jewish community and beyond, in Cleveland and on the national level.
Miller lives in
Chevy Chase, MarylandChevy Chase is the name of both a town and an unincorporated Census-Designated Place in Montgomery County, Maryland. In addition, a number of villages in the same area of Montgomery County include "Chevy Chase" in their names...
with his wife Lindsay, herself a key force in Seeds of Peace
since its inception. They have two children: Jennifer, author of
Inheriting the Holy Land: An American’s Search for Hope in the Middle East (Ballantine, 2005)
http://www.inheritingtheholyland.com/
and an aspiring writer and journalist, and Daniel, a graduate of
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University a private university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and is considered one of the Colonial Colleges....
with a degree in astrophysics.
Education
Miller began his undergraduate career at
Tulane UniversityTulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
and spent a semester at the
University of WarwickThe University of Warwick is a British campus university located on the outskirts of Coventry, West Midlands, England. It was established in 1965 as part of a government initiative to expand access to higher education, and in 2000 Warwick Medical School was opened as part of an initiative to train...
on a history honors exchange program before graduating from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
with a
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
in 1971. Continuing on toward an M.A. in
Civil WarA civil war is a war between organized groups within a single nation state, or, less commonly, between two nations created from a formerly-united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the nation or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies...
history, Miller changed fields to Middle East and American diplomacy and spent 1973 to 1974 in
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
studying Arabic and Hebrew. He completed his Ph. D. in 1977. His dissertation,
Search for Security: Saudi Arabian Oil and American Foreign Policy, 1939-1949 was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1980, and in paperback in 1991
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807843245http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/mid038.htmhttp://www.mepc.org/forums_chcs/archive.asp.
Government career
Miller entered the Department of State in November 1978 as an historian in the
Bureau of Public AffairsThe Bureau of Public Affairs is the part of the United States Department of State that carries out the Secretary of State's mandate to help Americans understand the importance of foreign affairs...
Office of the Historian where he edited the documentary series Foreign Relations of the United States. In November 1980, he became the State Department’s top analyst for Lebanon and the Palestinians in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). Awarded an International Affairs Fellowship by the Council on Foreign Relations, he spent 1982-1983 at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and the CFR in New York where he wrote his second book,
The PLO and the Politics of Survival. The following year he retuned to INR and served a temporary tour at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan before joining the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff in 1985. Between 1985 and 1993, Miller advised Secretary of State Shultz and Baker, helping the latter plan the
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
Peace Conference of October 1991.
In June 1993, Miller was appointed as the Deputy Special Middle East Coordinator
in an office headed by Dennis Ross and charged by President Clinton with managing the Arab-Israeli negotiations. For the next seven years, Miller worked as part of a small interagency team where he helped structure the U.S. role in Arab-Israeli negotiations through the historic Oslo process, multilateral Arab-Israeli economic summits, Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, and final status negotiations between Israel and Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians at
Camp DavidNaval Support Facility Thurmont, popularly known as Camp David, is a mountain based military camp in Frederick County, Maryland used as a country retreat and for high alert protection of the President of the United States and his guests....
in July 2000. Miller continued work on the Arab-Israeli issues in the
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000....
administration
where he served as the Senior Advisor on Arab-Israeli negotiations in the
Bureau of Near Eastern AffairsThe Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs is an agency of the Department of State within the United States government that deals with U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic relations with the countries and geographic entities of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya,...
to Secretary
Colin PowellColin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State , serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position...
. He resigned from the Department of State in January 2003 to become President of Seeds of Peace.
http://www.state.gov/s/p/of/abt/3436.htm
After Government
In January 2006, Miller became a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=sf.profile&person_id=166535 where he planned and participated in programs on the Middle East and Arab-Israeli issues. In 2008, he completed his fourth book,
The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, an insider’s look based on 160 interviews with former presidents, secretaries of state, Arabs, and Israelis, American Jews, Arabs, and evangelical Christians on why America succeeded and failed in Arab-Israeli diplomacy over the past forty years
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/muchtoopromisedland/.
Media and Public Speaking
Throughout his career, Miller has made frequent media and speaking appearances as an expert on Arab-Israeli and Middle Eastern issues, including on CNN (
American MorningAmerican Morning is the morning television show on CNN. It premiered in 2002.-About the Show:American Morning features co-hosts Kiran Chetry and John Roberts. Others who appear regularly are Rob Marciano with the weather, CNN financial correspondent Ali Velshi with a segment called "Minding Your...
, “Wolf Blitzer Reports”)
, “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,”
Fox News
, “The NBC Nightly News,” “CBS Evening News,”
ABC World News,
National Public RadioNational Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, signed into law...
, the BBC
, Canadian Broadcasting Cooperation
, Al Arabiya, and
Al JazeeraAl Jazeera , which means "The Island" or "The Peninsula" in Arabic, referring to the network's status as the only independent news network in the Middle East, is a television network headquartered in Doha, Qatar...
.
In 2005 Miller was a featured presenter at the
World Economic ForumThe World Economic Forum is a Geneva-based non-profit foundation best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world...
in both
DavosDavos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland.It is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
http://www.weforum.org/en/KNContributors/index.htm?personid=138098 and Amman, Jordan. He has also lectured at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
,
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
, New York University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, The
City Club of ClevelandThe City Club of Cleveland was incorporated in 1912 as a non-partisan forum for debate. It is the longest continuous free speech forum in the country and generally considered one of the top three speaking forums in America...
, Chatham House, and The International Institute for Strategic Studies.
His articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record...
,
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Washington, D.C. and is the city's oldest paper, founded in 1877. Being located in the nation's capital, it has a particular emphasis on national politics and international affairs...
,
Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California since 1881. It is distributed throughout the Western United States. It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States...
,
The Wilson QuarterlyThe Wilson Quarterly is a magazine published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The magazine was founded in 1976 by Peter Braestrup and James H. Billington. The Quarterly is noted for its nonpartisan, nonideological approach to current issues, with articles...
, and
The International Herald Tribune.
Awards
Miller has received the Department of State’s Distinguished, Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards. Between 1998 and 2000, he was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Governing Council
. In 2005, he was awarded the
Ellis Island Medal of HonorThe Ellis Island Medal of Honor was established in 1986 to pay tribute to the immigrant experience and individual achievement, and are awarded to U.S. citizens from various ethnic backgrounds. The honorees are awarded for showing outstanding qualities in their personal and professional lives, yet...
.
Articles
Events
(All events hosted at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars unless otherwise noted)
The Israelis and Their Politics, January 29, 2008
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=342860
After Annapolis: Where do we go from here?, December 6, 2007
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=320741
The Palestinians and Their Politics, October 29, 2007
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=289965
America, the Arab World, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, May 1, 2007
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=233363
Options for U.S. Policy towards the Arab-Israeli Conflict, November 15, 2006
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=207135
Assessing Developments in Israel & Lebanon, July 26, 2006
Politics and Diplomacy: Next Steps in Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, May 10, 2006
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=180177
Next Steps in the Middle East: Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian Perspectives, February 9, 2006
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=168032
External links