Reb Steve will share coffee with Prof. Aurel Braun, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the University of Toronto. They will have a discussion on The Rise of Russia: Election Meddling and the Outbreak of Peace in the Middle East.

This week's conversation will be broadcast live to the Beth Tzedec Facebook page and YouTube channel. Comment with your questions for Prof. Braun on either platform!

Aurel Braun is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies and of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. Professor Braun spent parts of 1981 and 1983 as a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Professor Braun has published extensively on communist affairs and strategic studies with a special focus on the problems of the transformation of the socialist systems in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. He is the author and editor/contributor of several books. These include The Soviet-East European Relationship in the Gorbachev Era: The Prospects for Adaptation (Westview Press, Boulder, CO and London, UK, 1990); The Middle East in Global Strategy (Westview Press, Boulder CO & London and Mansell Publishing, London, UK, 1987); Small State Security in the Balkans (Macmillan, London, UK, 1983); Ceausescu: The Problems of Power (Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto, 1980); Romanian Foreign Policy Since 1965: The Political and Military Limits of Autonomy (Praeger, NY, 1978); The Warsaw Pact: The End of an Era (Westview Press, Boulder, CO and London, UK, forthcoming). Professor Braun has written more than 50 scholarly articles and has contributed to numerous collections of scholarly works. The scholarly journals include Orbis, Problems of Communism, Millennium, International Journal and Sudosteuropa. Many of his articles have been translated and published in Japan.