About the Speaker

Joel S. Wit is a Senior Fellow with Stimson and Director of 38 North. Wit is an internationally recognized expert on Northeast Asia security issues. As a U.S. State Department official, he helped negotiate the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework and was subsequently in charge of its implementation until he left government in 2002, holding countless talks with North Korean officials, including the military and nuclear establishments. Since 2002, Wit has been a Senior Fellow at CSIS, a consultant to the National Academy of Science and an Adjunct Senior Researcher at Columbia University’s Weatherhead Institute for Asian Studies. Wit is a co-author (with Robert Gallucci and Daniel Poneman) of Going Critical: The First North Korea Nuclear Crisis, the winner of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2004 prize for best book. He has written extensively in publications ranging from Foreignpolicy.com to the New York Times and is a regular expert guest on television shows (e.g. the Lehrer Report and CNN’s The Situation Room) and radio (e.g. the Diane Rehm Show).