Vali Nasr
Vali R. Nasr is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international politics and Associate Director of the Fares Center of Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. He is a specialist on Middle East politics and political Islam, and has worked extensively on political and social developments in the Muslim world with a focus on the relation of religion to politics, social change, and democratization. He also serves as a senior fellow for the Dubai Initiative at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Nasr is the author of five books: The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2006); Democracy in Iran (Oxford University Press, 2006); The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford University Press, 2001); Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford University Press, 1996); and The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan (University of California Press, 1994). He is editor of The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2003); and the author of numerous articles in academic journals and encyclopedias. His works have been translated into several languages.
Dr. Nasr has briefed the White House, the Congress, the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Department of Defense on Middle East issues. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic, La Repubblica, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and was profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. His interviews and expert commentary have also been used in newspapers and new programs around the world, including Al-Jazeera, Der Spiegel, CNN, BBC, and 60 Minutes. He has appeared as a guest on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, Meet the Press, Larry King Live, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
He was recently named a 2006 Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation. He has also been the recipient of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Nasr received his BA from Tufts University in international relations summa cum laude and was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa in 1983. He earned his MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in international economics and Middle East studies in 1984 and his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in 1991.