Will the European Union Survive?

Richard N. Haass

Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the preeminent independent, nonpartisan organization in the United States dedicated to the study of American foreign policy. Until June 2003, Haass was director of policy planning for the Department of State as well as US coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and US envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. He was also special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 1989 to 1993. Haass is the author or editor of eleven books on American foreign policy, including War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars and one book on management. He is a Rhodes Scholar.

Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship and a professor of global economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. He is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a co-founder of The Baseline Scenario blog, and a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times’ Economix blog, Project Syndicate, and Bloomberg. He is also contributing business editor at the Huffington Post. Johnson is the co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters To You and 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, a best-selling assessment of the dangers now posed by the US financial sector. Johnson is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Beppe Severgnini

Beppe Severgnini is a columnist for the Financial Times and has been writing for the Corriere della Sera since 1995. His most recent book is Mamma Mia! Berlusconi’s Italy Explained to Posterity and Friends Abroad. Since 1998, Severgnini has been moderating the Italians blog. He is the most-followed Italian journalist on Twitter and the best-selling author of twelve books, including La Bella Figura, Un Italiano in America, and Ciao, America! He has written for The Sunday Times, The Economist, and The New York Times Syndicate. In 2004, he was voted European Journalist of the Year in Brussels. Severgnini is also a broadcaster and has worked for Rai, Sky Italia, Channel 4 UK, and the BBC. He teaches at the Walter Tobagi School of Journalism at the University of Milan/IFG. He has been a research fellow and writer in residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Middlebury College and at the universities of Milan-Bocconi, Parma, and Pavia.