Continuing Liberty conference, September 20-22, 2021: "Russia and the Frontline Democracies" with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Peter Pomerantsev, M.J. Crawford, Jonathan Katz, and Nino Evgenidze

Part of the Continuing Liberty conference.

M.J. Crawford serves as a foreign service officer at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. She has lived and worked previously in Moldova, Russia, and Uzbekistan. She has also served with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as an election observer in eastern Ukraine.

Nino Evgenidze is the executive director at the Economic Policy Research Center in Tbilisi. Additionally, she serves as an anchor of a morning economic show at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and is a member of the Anticorruption Policy Coordination Council of Georgia. Previously, she served in various positions in the government of Georgia, NGOs, and international organizations.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, guest professor at Estonia’s Tartu University, served as the fourth president of Estonia (2006–16). He previously served Estonia as a diplomat and journalist, and was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s. He served as minister of foreign affairs (1996–98 and 1999–2002) and later was a member of the European Parliament (2004–06).

Jonathan Katz is senior fellow and director of Democracy Initiatives at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Previously, Katz served as the deputy assistant administrator in the Europe and Eurasia bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development (2014–17). He has also served as a senior advisor to the assistant secretary in the International Organization Affairs Bureau at the U.S. Department of State (2010–14).

Peter Pomerantsev, a contributing editor of American Purpose, is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, where he co-directs the Arena Initiative on disinformation and polarization. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2017–20). He was a member of USC Annenberg’s Transatlantic Working Group on Internet Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression.