Michael Haltzel, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University SAIS, was long-time Democratic Staff Director of the Subcommittee on European Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior advisor to former U.S. Vice President (then-Senator) Joseph R. Biden, Jr.  Haltzel’s other previous positions include Chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, Director of West European Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center, Vice President for Academic Affairs of Longwood University, and Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.  The author or editor of ten books on European history and politics and numerous journal and newspaper articles, he is a frequent commentator on U.S. and European television and for several years was a blogger for the Huffington Post.  Dr. Haltzel is the recipient of state decorations from Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Sweden.  He received a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard.