William Morris (Next Century Foundation)
William Morris is Secretary General of the Next Century Foundation
Formerly a journalist and publisher, William Morris is an expert on Arab Affairs with close family connections with the Arab world. At one time William Morris edited "Voice", a periodical on Arab Affairs. He is a dual national (UK/US).
William started his career as a publisher in the late sixties founding a number of publications including the now defunct London Law Quarterly. William left publishing in the early eighties to set up a sheep farm in South Wales and became a volunteer Prison Visitor at Swansea Prison (eventually becoming local National Association of Official Prison Visitors secretary). He was then elected as a County Councillor for West Glamorgan County Council and served on the Public Protection Committee. Following an ill fated venture in the Mining Industry (Founded Carreg Goch Mining in the Swansea Valley in 1988) William moved to the Middle East in 1991.
William Morris then worked as the Special Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Sultanate of Oman, in which capacity he lived and worked in the Sultanate where he was based at Sultan Qaboos University for six years from 1991 to 1996.
William returned with his family to Cornwall in 1996 and soon after he was appointed as the Secretary General of the Next Century Foundation, an organization whose founders included Jon Kimche and Lord Arnold Weinstock, with backing from Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire and the then Crown Prince (now Amir) of Qatar.
He then worked closely with the incoming Labour Government in Britain. At the behest of Derek Fatchett MP (then Minister at the Foreign Office) he produced a report on Kashmir in consultation with the Mirpuri community in Britain. In October 2000 William Morris helped set up a war avoidance team to carry messages back and forth between the then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Peter Hain, and Iraqi Minister Mr Tariq Aziz (a matter then confidential which has since been put on public record in an interview with Mr Hain by the Today program and in responses to questions from news reporters).
He was then appointed as chairman of the International Media Council (now part of the International Council for Press and Broadcasting) based in London in May 2003. In this capacity he has led press delegations to Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Syria. The professed goal of the Media Council is to counter xenophobia and disinformation in the press of the Middle East and the West. A number of prominent Israeli journalists have been recipients of its media awards in London including Mr Ari Rath, Mr Danny Rubinstein and Mr Yoav Stern. Arab recipients have included Sami Abdul Shafi and Mr Jihad al Khazen.
William Morris is a trustee of Sanghata Global, a non-profit organisation for transformational change that designs and implements breakthrough conceptual models focused on serving humanity. It is a charitable company incorporated in the United Kingdom.
William Morris was a speaker at The Policy Studies Organization's Middle East Dialogue 2012 "The Middle East Today: The Arab Spring, The Syrian Summer"
William Morris ran as an independent candidate in the England and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Elections 2012 but lost to the Conservative candidate, Commander Tony Hogg.
Read more about William Morris (Next Century Foundation): Personal Life and Education
Famous quotes containing the words morris and/or century:
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)