David Smilde

David Smilde is a political sociologist who has studied Venezuela for over thirty years, living there for sixteen. He has published five books and thirty academic articles on the country, and has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, El Pais, Time, The Dispatch and Foreign Policy. He has done advocacy regarding Venezuela with the Washington Office on Latin America, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Atlantic Council and in 2017 testified about Venezuelan in a hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is co-founder and co-organizer of the Venezuela Conflict and Peacebuilding Research Network at Tulane's Center for Inter-American Policy and Research.