The 2010 Working Group papers are now available online.

Role of Religious Leaders and Religious Communities in Diplomacy
Bishop John B. Chane and Reverend Canon John L. Peterson, Washington National Cathedral
Recent incidents such as the Swiss referendum, the Geert Wilders video, and the Danish cartoon controversy have demonstrated the renewed role that religion plays in foreign policy.  Religious leaders and the communities they serve have the capacity either to temper or exacerbate disputes that arise as a result of religious or cultural differences, helping determine whether they remain localized or -- in a world of instant communications -- spiral rapidly into more global foreign policy conflicts.  Religious leaders and communities have also played important roles in halting ethnic violence and fostering reconciliation within states. This working group will look at both the potential and limits on the role religious leaders and communities can play in diplomacy and seek to build partnerships among religious leaders for this purpose.
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Democracy and Islamic Parties: Opportunities and Challenges
Bridget Welsh, Associate Professor of Political Science, Singapore Management University, and Syed Azman Syed Ahmad, Central Working Committee Member and State Assemblyman, Kuala Trengganu (Pan-Islamic Party of Malaysia)
Throughout the Muslim world, Islamic parties are playing a major role in national politics. Often lumped together with organizations that use Islam in violent struggles and mistakenly tied to terrorism and intolerance, Islamic parties are wrongly pegged as “undemocratic” and “extremist”. Few link Islamic parties with democracy and recognize the crucial role these parties play in representation, governance and the promotion of rights. This panel will bring together representatives from Islamic parties and the Western world to discuss how these parties promote democracy and the challenges they face in doing so. The aim of the discussion is to start a dialogue with Islamic parties over their role in strengthening (and potentially weakening) democracy as well as promoting a better understanding of how their participation in national and international politics is evolving.

Transformative Partnerships in U.S.-Muslim World Relations: Empowering Networks for Community Development and Social Change
Peter Mandaville, George Mason University
Muslim populations around the world consistently indicate that their chief priorities and concerns relate to issues of economic security, education, and justice. This working group will bring together thought leaders, community organizers, and foundations from the United States and the Muslim world to identify areas of mutual interest and begin designing actionable programs that emphasize sustainable community development and social entrepreneurship. Seeking to harness the appetite for social transformation among young people in the United States and the Muslim world, the workshop will build a network of change leaders, allowing them to share their experiences and explore new collaborations. The workshop will have two main areas of focus: fostering youth involvement in community development and exploring the transformative potential of mobile technologies and social media to both address inequalities and support existing community networks. Concrete deliverables will include recommendations for specific programs and initiatives as well as a set of best practice guidelines for designing transformative social networks.
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Scientific, Intellectual and Governance Cooperation on Emerging Environmental Challenges
Amit Pandya, Senior Associate and Director, Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges project, Henry L. Stimson Center
The working group will bring together scientists, engineers, educators, economists and entrepreneurs, technical subject experts, experts in science policy and governance, and observers and analysts of politics and of philosophical and intellectual trends. The group will identify the principal economic, social and natural challenges posed by environmental change, and their principal causes (demographic, economic, and social). It will consider the availability of scientific and other intellectual resources and institutions relevant to these, and will discuss existing and potential cooperation, among sectors and disciplines and at the regional, inter-regional and global levels. The workshop will identify, consolidate and expand existing networks, and foster creation of additional ones. We will emphasize integral multi-disciplinary approaches to economic, social and environmental trends.
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New Media to Further Global Engagement
al-Husein Madhany, Chief Strategist and Senior Partner, Culture MEDIA Group
The New Media to Further Global Engagement working group will be led by al-Husein N. Madhany.  This working group will explore opportunities for expanding the instruments available for foreign policy to engage weak states. Fragmented and internally-conflicted states can be difficult to influence by traditional foreign policy instruments and further be difficult to understand through traditional media outlets.  New models of civil society action enabled by new media--and more broadly grounded civic media--show potential for reducing internal conflict and promoting social trust among tribal, ethnic, and religious groups.  Bringing new media communications together with model civil society programs creates more powerful opportunities to enhance understanding of these internal conflicts and thereby address them in ways that will help accelerate social and political change.  We will accomplish this by identifying tools in any media that can foster or enhance civic engagement through case studies that span the globe.  This working group will create policy recommendations on how best to employ civic media as well as new media information technology communication tools to harness the muted voices of civil societies to be active partners in promoting foreign policy objectives by working for economic, social, and political reform.
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