MARK A. BRUZONSKY
Bruzonsky was the featured speaker at a major symposium at Princeton
University in 2006 along with internationally known Professor
Cornell West and the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, Anne Marie Slaughter, now head of Policy
Planning at the U.S. Department of State. The theme
of the symposium was "Intellectuals
and the Institution: What's in the Service of the Nation"?
And he was the the keynote speaker before
a standing-room-only audience of more than 3000 at the Palmer House
Hilton Ballroom for
the University of Chicago Model United Nations in
2002, the only keynote speaker to ever receive a standing ovation at
this yearly
event
In the past Bruzonsky was Associate Editor of WORLDVIEW MAGAZINE in New York and Interview Editor of THE MIDDLE EAST MAGAZINE in London. He also has been the Washington Representative for Goals for Americans and early in his career was the Washington Representative of The World Jewish Congress. He was also Special Assistant to Philip M. Klutznick, one of the most senior American Jewish leaders and the only man to have ever been President of B'nai B'rith International and the World Jewish Congress, as well as Secretary of Commerce.
Bruzonsky has been a consultant on the Middle East for a number of prestigious organizations including Congressional Quarterly (CQ), The National Geographic Society, Okaz Organization for Press and Publications in Saudi Arabia, and The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian where he co-edited the book SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST; REGIONAL CHANGE AND GREAT POWER STRATEGIES . His previous book -- THE MIDDLE EAST, U.S. POLICY, ISRAEL, OIL, AND THE ARABS -- was published by Congressional Quarterly (CQ) and he was special Middle East consultant for an educational film-strip series titled THE MIDDLE EAST published by the National Geographic Society.
In these many and varied capacities Bruzonsky
has made approximately 200 visits to countries in Europe and the
greater
Middle East region
from Libya to
Pakistan. He has been the official guest of many governments and
organizations
in a number of countries including Egypt, Jordan, Israel,
Lebanon, the PLO,
Tunisia,
Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and
Pakistan.
Very early in his career
Bruzonsky
made
world headlines when he personally met alone with Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and encouraged him to visit Israel. At that meeting
Sadat immediately decided to send the first public telegram from the
Arab world
to Israel and a few days later decided to visit Israel just as
Bruzonsky had advocated. A picture of Bruzonsky meeting with
Sadat
appeared on
the front
page
of major Egyptian newspapers just days before Sadat announced he would
be visiting Israel.
The previous year Bruzonsky was the
subject of a
column by Washington
Post Editor Steven Rosenfeld, singled him out for his
insightful commentaries regarding U.S. policies toward
the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
During his graduate school years Bruzonsky was Chief Representative at the U.N. of the International Student Movement for the United Nations (ISMUN) traveling to 35 countries. ISMUN at the time was the only student and youth NGO with the highest "Consultative 1" status.
For more than a decade, from 1982 through 1994, Bruzonsky wrote a regular bi-weekly syndicated newspaper column called From Washington that was
published
in a number of leading newspapers in the Middle East including Al-Ahram
in Egypt, Ad-Dustour in
Jordan, The Muslim in
Pakistan, Okaz
in Saudi Arabia, and a weekly Palestinian in
Jerusalem. The many hundreds of columns
are now being archived and will soon be made available here. And
from 1988 through 1995
Bruzonsky
was Chairperson of the Jewish Committee
On the Middle East (JCOME), an
organization of Jewish intellectuals and academics which was at the
time the first American Jewish organization to call for a
fully sovereign and independent Palestinian State. The JCOME Statement of Principles was
published in the Congressional Record
and in over 50 newspapers and magazines including The New York Review of Books.
In 1989 Bruzonsky was invited to be part of a special year-long panel of experts and distinguished citizens organized by the Middle East Institute and The Atlantic Council which resulted in the publication of a special report, Western Interests and U.S. Policy Optons in the Middle East. Bruzonsky wrote the only dissent published in the report, which subsequent years proved to be right on target.
In 1995 Bruzonsky
was one of a select group of
ten Middle East experts featured in a special multimedia CD about
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the "peace process," titled
LINES
IN THE SAND, published by Tiger Media in Canada.
From
1994
through 2004 Bruzonsky was the producer and host a weekly TV Program
that was broadcast on all the
major
cable systems in the greater Washington, DC
area as well as for some years in New York and Philadelphia.
Magazine Cover "A Look At The Middle East"
