Bob Zeidman
Founder and President

Bob Zeidman is the Founder and President of Speaking For Democracy. He is the also President of Zeidman Consulting (www.ZeidmanConsulting.com), a contract research and development firm, a company he started in 1987. A long-time entrepreneur, Bob was the Founder and President of two previous companies — The Chalkboard Network, an e-learning company for high tech professionals, and eVault, a provider of remote backup services. Bob is also a writer, producing numerous articles on engineering and business as well as three textbooks, two novels, and three screenplays. He has given seminars and taught courses at engineering conferences throughout the world. Bob is active in a number of nonprofit organizations and writes a regular article on Israel for the Beth David Star.

Bob holds a Masters Degree from Stanford University and two Bachelors Degrees from Cornell University.

Yatindra Bhatnagar

Yatindra Bhatnagar has over five decades in Journalism - print, radio, TV and on the Web. A prolific writer on current affairs, he helped to set up a University Department of Journalism for Post Graduate students in India and taught there for a year.

Yatindra has reported, written, and lectured on a wide variety of subjects from religion and politics to poetry. He has worked with several social, political, religious, and cultural organizations to arrange seminars, celebrations, and conferences. He has worked for newspapers and magazines in various positions in India and the U.S. including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Fort Worth Star Telegram. His experience includes positions as the Chief of News Bureau, Hindustan for the Hindustan Times Group and Chief Editor of Dainik Bhaskar group of Hindi newspapers. In the US, Yatindra was Contributing Editor of International Business Group and India Times, and Chief Editor of The Indian Voice, India Post, and Editor-in-Chief of the website www.InternationalOpinion.com.

Yatindra frequently appeared on TV and radio talk shows, performing interviews with political, cultural and social personalities, and giving commentaries on a variety of topics. He has had special invitations for visits by the governments of the many nations and was selected for special United Nations Fellowship to attend and report on a U.N. Conference in Mexico City.

Yatindra has published over 20 books, in English and Hindi, including Bangladesh, Birth of a Nation, Mujib, The Architect of Bangladesh, Australiana, A Visit to Remember, Korean Experience, President Tito, and Autumn Leaves, a collection of poems. He has contributed articles to the magazines Discovery in Europe, Into The Sun, Great American Poetry Anthology and The Golden Treasury of Great Poems.

Tom Henriksen

Thomas H. Henriksen, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution

Expertise: U. S. foreign policy, international political and defense affairs, and responses to “failed” and rogue states as well as terrorism.

Thomas Henriksen’s current research focuses on American foreign policy in the post-Cold War world, with an emphasis on US diplomatic and military courses of action toward terrorist havens like Afghanistan and so-called rogue states, including North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. He also concentrates on armed and covert interventions abroad. He edited the book Foreign Policy for America in the Twenty-first Century, which provides competing views on US options around the world. Other recent publications include the monograph Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States (1999) and an edited volume North Korea after Kim Il Sung (1997). He has written scores of articles for academic journals on counterinsurgency, covert operations, and guerrilla movements. His writings have also appeared in Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Vital Speeches, San Jose Mercury News, and the Weekly Standard.
He was a key advisor in establishing the Center for the Prevention of Terrorism at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. His undergraduate degree is from the Virginia Military Institute and his Ph.D. is in history from Michigan State University.

David Meir-Levi

David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli currently living in Palo Alto. He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University. He taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Tel Aviv during the 60's and 70's. Upon returning to the USA, Mr. Meir-Levi has worked as a professional Jewish educator, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since the outbreak of the second Intifada (9/28/00), he has lectured throughout northern California at synagogues, churches, universities, and service organizations on topics related to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and the roots of terrorism in the Arab world. He has most recently taught a series of courses at San Jose State University, UC Davis, Cal-Poly Institute, and at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, on the history of the Israel-Arab conflict.

He has a weekly radio show, “Mid-East Media Watch” at KZSU Stanford (90.1 fm, Tuesdays, 11:00-11:30 am); and a monthly column on Zionist history in the Jewish Community News (newspaper of the San Jose Jewish community). In his “day job”, Mr. Meir-Levi is an insurance agent and investment professional, with offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco.

Mr. Meir-Levi is the director of the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI), a grassroots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay area working to educate the American public and its leaders in to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and realistic options for resolution. He lectures and teaches in English, Hebrew, and Spanish.

Yitzhak Santis

Mr. Santis has been with JCRC for 15 years. Prior to that he worked with the Anti-Defamation League as a regional director in Omaha, monitoring and fighting anti-Semitism and hate crimes in the Mid West at the height of the farm crisis of the 1980s.

Mr. Santis was in Jerusalem on November 4, 1995 when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. He has lived and studied in Jerusalem, Israel. He graduated the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in Jewish Studies, and continued his studies at Emerson College in Boston majoring in communications. He speaks Hebrew, is married with four daughters, and is a composer in his spare time.