LISD co-hosted a lecture, "A Regional Approach to Afghanistan," at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, February 23, 2009 in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus. The lecture was given by Barnett Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, where he directs the program on the Reconstruction of Afghanistan. The event was co-sponsored with the Woodrow Wilson School.

Rubin has worked at the Center on International Cooperation since July 2000. During 1994-2000 he was Director of the Center for Preventive Action, and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Rubin was Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University from 1990 to 1996. Previously, he was a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

Rubin is a Director of Gulestan Ariana Ltd., a private company manufacturing essential oils and related consumer products in Afghanistan. In November-December 2001 he served as special advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement. He advised the United Nations on the drafting of the constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Compact, and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy.

Rubin received a PhD (1982) and MA (1976) from the University of Chicago, and a BA (1972) from Yale University. He also received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1977-1978. He is currently chair of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (a program of the Social Science Research Council), a member of the Executive Board of Human Rights Watch/Asia, and the Board of the Open Society Institute's Central Eurasia Project. During 1996-98 he served on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad.

Rubin is the author of Blood on the Doorstep: the Politics of Preventing Violent Conflict (2002). He is also the author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2002; first edition 1995), Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (1999), Stabilizing Nigeria: Sanctions, Incentives, and Support for Civil Society (1998); Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building (1998);Cases and Strategies for Preventive Action (1998); Toward Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in the South Balkans (1996), and The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (1995). He has written numerous articles and book reviews on conflict prevention, state formation, and human rights. His articles have appeared inForeign Affairs, Orbis, Survival, International Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books.