The Future of Middle East Peace – 2025 Fall Foreign Policy Forum

2025 Fall Foreign Policy Forum

The Future of Middle East Peace
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 | 5:30–7:30 PM
Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine

Hosted by the World Affairs Council of Maine, co-sponsored by the Muskie School of Public Service, and made possible through the support of the William S. Jelin Foundation.

Now in its fifth year, the Fall Foreign Policy Forum brings together leading voices in diplomacy and analysis to explore some of today’s most urgent international challenges.

This year’s program, The Future of Middle East Peace, will feature a conversation moderated by Jackie Northam, international affairs correspondent for NPR, with Ambassador (ret.) Yael Lempert and Khaled Elgindy. The discussion will examine prospects for renewed diplomacy, shifting regional alliances, and new approaches to lasting peace in the Middle East.

Schedule
Doors open: 5:15 PM
Networking reception: 5:30–6:00 PM
Program: 6:15–7:30 PM

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Seating is limited; advance registration is strongly encouraged.  Please use the button below to reserve your seat.

After submitting your registration, you’ll receive a confirmation email with event details and arrival instructions.

About the Moderator and Panelists

Jackie Northam is NPR’s International Affairs Correspondent, a veteran journalist who has spent more than three decades reporting from conflict zones and world capitals across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Her work has spanned the fall of communism, post‑invasion Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan. Northam currently covers the intersection of geopolitics and global economics, including U.S.–China relations and sanctions policy. She has received multiple journalism honors, including Edward R. Murrow and duPont‑Columbia Awards.​

Ambassador (ret.) Yael Lempert most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and previously as Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. A career diplomat, she has held senior roles on the National Security Council and in U.S. embassies in Cairo, Tel Aviv, and Tunis, focusing on Arab‑Israeli relations, regional security, and Middle East peace negotiations.

Khaled Elgindy is a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where he teaches and writes on Palestinian politics and U.S. policy in the Middle East. He is the author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump (Brookings Institution Press, 2019). From 2020 through 2025, he directed the Middle East Institute’s Program on Palestine and Israeli–Palestinian Affairs. From 2010 to 2018, Elgindy served as a resident scholar in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Earlier in his career, he was an adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with Israel (2004–2009) and a key participant in the Annapolis peace talks of 2007–08.