In his inaugural address on January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama declared, "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." This vision of a "new way forward" became a theme of the Obama administration's interactions with the Arab and Muslim world during its first year. President Obama further articulated this vision in his major speech in Cairo, in which he identified seven major challenges that the U.S. and the Muslim world must confront together: violent extremism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, nuclear nonproliferation, democracy, women's rights, religious freedom, and economic development. On the one-year anniversary of President Obama's inauguration, we gathered to assess the Obama administration's first year and examined opportunities for the administration to implement its vision of a new beginning with the Arab and Muslim world.

The January 20th meeting, co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Project on Middle East Democracy marked the end of the Emerging Leaders Conference Series, a series of meetings which convened civic leaders from Amman, Beirut and Cairo, respectively, to give recommendations on how the U.S. could best follow through on the President's remarks to the Muslim World in Cairo.