Ambassador Michael Gfoeller (ret.) is an independent consultant on international politics and security matters. He served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer from 1984 to 2010. His career included service in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Russia, Armenia, Moldova, Poland, and Belgium. He served for two years (2008-2010) as the Senior Political Advisor to General David Petraeus at U.S. Central Command and retired from the State Department with the rank of Ambassador. Ambassador Gfoeller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Cosmos Club. He is married to Ambassador Tatiana C. Gfoeller-Volkoff.

Peter Frost holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Université Laval, in Quebec, Canada.

Lake Trail Fiction
A lifetime resident of Palm Beach, prize-winning journalist Juliette de Marcellus has created this satirical novel with a witty and insightful view of high society and the once-celebrated international set. Aiding her relentless gaze is her own background: her father a French count and anthropologist, her mother from an English family of writers and politicians. Her lifelong long familiarity with the celebrity world in New York, Paris, London, and Palm Beach gives her work a revealing quality of reality, spiced with the world’s absurdities and pretentions.

Professor Fahrettin Altun has served as Turkey’s communications director since July 25, 2018. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1976, he holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Istanbul University and a master’s degree in sociology from Mimar Sinan University. Altun received his doctorate from Istanbul University in 2006 with the thesis “A Comparative Analysis of McLuhan and Baudrillard’s Media Theories.” Altun was a visiting researcher at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 2002-2003. He was a member of the founding academic board of Istanbul Şehir University and a founding coordinator of the School of Communication. He chaired the Department of Communication at Istanbul Şehir University between 2008 and 2014. Altun proceeded to teach sociology at Istanbul Medeniyet University between 2015 and 2017. Altun was the general coordinator of SETA Istanbul and deputy general coordinator of the SETA Foundation in 2014-2018, while also serving as dean of the School of Communication at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul. In addition to serving as editor-in-chief of Kriter, a monthly magazine, Altun contributed as a commentator to TRT 1’s “Enine Boyuna” and “Dışa Bakış” on TRT Haber and wrote a column for the newspapers Sabah and Daily Sabah. Having previously hosted the show “Ayrıntı” on TRT 2 and TRT Haber, he worked as an editor with the publishers Yöneliş and Küre, as an editor-in-chief at the magazine Anlayış, and a columnist at the newspaper Akşam. Altun has authored the book The Theory of Modernization, and is a co-author of The Triumph of Turkish Democracy: The July 15 Coup Attempt and Its Aftermath, The Origins of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Strategy, Press Freedom in Turkey: Myths and Facts, and Media on July 15, which were published by SETA.

George Szamuely, Ph.D., is senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute in London and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia (2014). He has taught at universities in New York, Budapest, and Belgrade and worked at the Times Literary Supplement and National Law Journal and contributed to many publications, including the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, New York Press, The American Scholar, The National Interest, Orbis, and Counterpunch.

Stephen Shearier holds a Ph.D., cum laude, in German Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin, New York University, Rutgers University, CUNY, and the New School. Among his publications are articles on Naturlyrik in East and West Germany, Reinhard Sorge, and Franz Kafka, along with biographies of expressionist writers and a book-length study of expressionist theater in Berlin. Dr. Shearier is now retired and lives in New York City, where he is working on his next volume of poetry.

Dr. Jeton McClinton teaches at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Neil Kent is editor in chief of the Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, Associate Professor of the Rennes School of Business (Grande École de France), and formerly Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Fellow of the Cyber Documentation Project, both at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Crimea: A History, St. Petersburg: A Cultural Guide, A Concise History of the Russian Orthodox Church, and many other books.

Clément Chevalier is an officer in the French army and serves at the École militaire de Paris. Occupying the position of head of international relations and management sciences, Clément Chevalier has two masters degrees, in history and management, and is preparing a doctorate in law. Chevalier is a writer of historical and academic works, with a particular interest in baroque music.

Onianwa Oluchukwu Ignatus is a Nigerian historian. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Ibadan and is the author of Britain’s Injurious Peace Games in the Nigerian Civil War; Once Upon a Time in Biafra: Memories, Foreign Visitations, and Life Experiences in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970, and other books.