Due to recent developments in the region and the postponement of the UN conference on the two-state solution, this event has been postponed. Please stay tuned for more information about the rescheduled date.
On May 13, 2025, President Donald Trump landed in Saudi Arabia to kick off a high-profile diplomatic tour of the Gulf region. The trip was marked by a series of significant economic and military agreements and human rights were ignored, despite warnings from rights groups that the trip risked emboldening more abuse.
In the aftermath of Trump’s trip to the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia’s regional influence and geopolitical strategies have continued to evolve, becoming a critical power broker, especially regarding the future of normalization with Israel and prospects of Palestinian statehood.
Ahead of the June 17–20 UN Conference on the two-state solution co-sponsored by Saudi Arabia, join us for a conversation on President Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s growing regional influence, and the sidelining of human rights.
Speakers:
- Maryam Aldossari
Saudi Human Rights Activist;
Senior Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London - Kristin Smith Diwan
Senior Resident Scholar, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. - Charles Dunne
Non-Resident Fellow, Arab Center Washington, D.C.;
Scholar, Middle East Institute
Moderator:
- Abdullah Alaoudh
Senior Director of Countering Authoritarianism, MEDC
Bios:
Maryam Aldossari is a Saudi human rights activist and a senior lecturer in Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests cover, among other topics, equality and workforce diversity, women’s employment, international assignment management, the psychological contract, and idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). Aldossari has published in various outlets, including international journals such as Work, Employment and Society; International Journal of Human Resource Management; Group & Organization Management; and Gender, Work & Organization. Aldossari is an associate editor of Gender, Work & Organization Management, serving on the Work, Employment, and Society editorial boards.
Kristin Smith Diwan is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C., where she heads the institute’s work on society and culture. Diwan’s current projects concern political activism, generational change, and the evolution of Islamism in the GCC states. Her analyses of and expertise on Gulf affairs have appeared in many publications, among them the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Middle East Report. Diwan was previously an assistant professor at the American University School of International Service. She has held visiting scholar positions at both the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies and the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. From 2013-2014 she served as a visiting senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Hariri Center for the Middle East where she published on youth movements and participated in the Strategic Dialogue for a New U.S.-Gulf Partnership. She received her PhD in political science from Harvard University, and holds an MA in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Charles Dunne is currently a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and a scholar with the Middle East Institute. Since 2019, he has served as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, where he teaches courses on U.S. foreign policy and crisis management in the Middle East. Dunne spent 24 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving overseas in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Madras, India. He was foreign policy adviser to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy at the Joint Staff in the Pentagon (2007-2008). He was director of Middle East and North Africa programs from 2011 to 2015 at Freedom House, where he focused on human rights and democracy promotion in the region. Prior to joining Freedom House, he was Director for Iraq at the National Security Council from 2005-2007. Dunne served as a member of the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff, where he contributed to the development of presidential initiatives to advance political reform and democracy in the broader Middle East and North Africa. He is a frequent media guest on outlets such as BBC, al-Jazeera, and al-Hurra, and has appeared on CBS, Fox, and NPR.
Abdullah Alaoudh is the Countering Authoritarianism senior director at MEDC. Previously, he served as the Saudi director at the Freedom Initiative. He was a visiting adjunct professor at the Elliott School at George Washington University and served for two years as a senior fellow at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He also was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School at the Center for Islamic Law and Civilization between 2017-2018. Before joining the Freedom Initiative, Alaoudh served for three years as the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the nonprofit organization founded by Jamal Khashoggi. Alaoudh is the Secretary General and co-founder of the National Assembly Party (NAAS), Saudi Arabia’s first openly declared political party, which calls for an elected parliament and constitutional safeguards in Saudi Arabia. He is also a signatory and one of the drafters of the Saudi People’s Vision for Reform, a blueprint for democracy and human rights in Saudi Arabia. Alaoudh obtained his S.J.D. and L.L.M. from the University of Pittsburgh in comparative international law. He received his B.A. in Islamic Law from Qassim University in Saudi Arabia.