Dr. Howard Wolpe, a former seven-term Member of Congress and former Presidential Special Envoy to Africa's Great Lakes Region, is currently Director of the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and of the Center's Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity.

A specialist in African politics, for ten of his fourteen years in the Congress Dr. Wolpe chaired the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He also chaired the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. His other roles in the Congress included the co-chairmanship of the bipartisan Northeast-Midwest Congressional Coalition and the Congressional Energy and Environmental Study Conference.

Prior to entering the Congress, Dr. Wolpe served in the Michigan House of Representatives and as a member of the Kalamazoo City Commission.

Dr. Wolpe has taught at Western Michigan University (Political Science Department) and the University of Michigan (Institute of Public Policy Studies), and has served as a Visiting Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program of the Brookings Institution, as a Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar, and as a consultant to the World Bank and to the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department.

Dr. Wolpe received his B.A. degree from Reed College, and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Wolpe is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), of the Board of Directors of Africare, and of the Advisory Board of Coexistence International. He co-directed (with Ambassador David C. Miller, Jr.) the Ninetieth American Assembly on "Africa and U.S. National Interests" held in March 1997. He has written extensively on Africa, American foreign policy, and the management of ethnic and racial conflict. He is the co-author (with David F. Gordon and David C. Miller, Jr.) of The United States and Africa: A Post-Cold War Perspective (The American Assembly, 1998), and (with David Gordon) of "The Other Africa: an End to Afro-Pessimism," printed in the Spring 1998 volume of the World Policy Journal. He co-edited (with Robert Melson), Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism (Michigan State University Press, 1971) and is the author of Urban Politics in Nigeria (University of California Press, 1973), of "The Great Lakes Crisis: An American View," South African Journal of International Affairs, Summer 2000, and a co-author of "Re-building Peace and State Capacity in War-Torn Burundi," The Roundtable: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 375, 457-467, July 2004, a co-author (with Juana Brachet) of "Conflict Sensitive Development Assistance: The Case of Burundi," World Bank Social Development Papers, No. 27, June 2005, and a co-author (with Steve McDonald) of "Training Leaders for Peace," The Journal of Democracy, Vol. 17, No. 1, 126-132, January 2006.

He is the recipient of the African-American Institute's Star Crystal Award for Excellence, of the Michigan Audubon Society's Legislator of the Year Award and the Sierra Club's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Currently, Dr. Wolpe is working on a book based on his diplomatic experience with the Burundi peace process, and is directing post-conflict leadership training programs in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.