Invited Faculty
Historian of the modern Middle East and, until recently, senior research officer for Israel and the region at the Center for Israel Education in Atlanta; former visiting professor, Northwestern University; former graduate instructor, UCLA, where he won the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Beyer Family Senior Fellow and Director, Turkish Research Program, The Washington Institute; former chair of the Turkey Advanced Area Studies Program at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute; author, most recently, of A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey’s Uncontainable Forces.
Morningstar Senior Fellow, Research Counselor and Director of the Viterbi Program on Iran and U.S. Policy, The Washington Institute; former senior economist, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Senior fellow, The Washington Institute; former director for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Biden Administration and special advisor, Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
Friedmann Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute, where she focuses on Shia politics in Lebanon and throughout the Levant; former managing editor, Now! Lebanon’s largest English-language daily news platform; author of Hezbollahland: Mapping Dahiya and Lebanon’s Shia Community.
Managing Director of the Washington-based Georgetown Strategy Group; former Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance; minister counselor in the career Senior Foreign Service, including 17 years overseas in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia and three years as Senior Advisor to the President’s Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.
Robert and Katheryn Dockson Professor of Public Policy, Pepperdine School of Public Policy; author of Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grant Strategy Weakened America; In Defense of the Bush Doctrine; Henry M. Jackson: A Life; and Arms Control in the Pre-Nuclear Era.
Director of the post- graduate program on the Arab and Muslim worlds at France’s Institut d’Études Politiques; former professor, Science Po Paris; former special advisor on Middle East affairs to the President of the French Republic; author, most recently, Away from Chaos: The Middle East and the Challenge to the West.
Walter P. Stern Fellow, The Washington Institute, former director, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, and founding president, Shalem College, Jerusalem, Israel; author of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failures of Middle Eastern Studies in America.
President, ConservAmerica; former deputy secretary of energy (acting) and chief operating officer, Department of Energy, GWBush administration; special assistant to the President for economic policy, GWBush administration; former senior advisor, policy and government affairs, Chevron.
Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow and Director, Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute; former deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and research, Department of the Treasury; author of Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad and Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God.
Blumenstein- Rosenbloom Senior Fellow, The Washington Institute; former director of strategic initiatives and senior research fellow at the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University; editor, Jihadist Governance and Statecraft and Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses.
Director of research, Middle East Institute; former director, National Security Council, Clinton Administration; former senior fellow, Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute; author of Arabs at War; The Threatening Storm; and The Persian Puzzle.
Davidson Distinguished Fellow and Counselor, The Washington Institute. Former Presidential Envoy for Middle East peace, Clinton Administration; senior director, National Security Council, Reagan and Obama administrations; Director, State Department Policy Planning Staff, GHW Bush administration; author, most recently, of Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World.
Senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, contributing writer at The Atlantic; former analyst on Iran, International Crisis Group.
Segal Executive Director and Berkowitz Chair in U.S. Middle East Policy, The Washington Institute, author of The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East; Among the Righteous: Lost Stories of the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands; and From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition.
Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and former senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs, National Security Council, GWBush administration; co-chair, Congressionally-mandated Syria Study Group.
Kassen Family Senior Fellow and director of research, The Washington Institute; former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, The Pentagon, Biden Administration; co-chair, Congressionally-mandated Syria Study Group.
Former executive-level leader in the Central Intelligence Agency with more than 35 years of experience, including in Directorate of Digital Innovation, Directorate of Analysis and National Reconnaissance Office.
Senior fellow and deputy director of the Defense Program and lead of The Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS); staff member of the Congressionally-appointed 2022 National Defense Strategy Commission; former senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based jointly in Washington, D.C., and Manama, Bahrain.