Speakers for this event

• Joseph Bahout

  Joseph Bahout

  Director at Issam Fares Institute AUB, Beirut

  Director at Issam Fares Institute AUB, B...

• Galip Dalay

  Galip Dalay

  Senior Associate Fellow at Al Sharq Strategic Research

  Research director at Al Sharq Forum and senior associate fellow on Turkey and Kurdish Affairs at Al Jazeera Center for Studies. He previously worked as a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and as a political researcher at SETA Foundation in Ankara. He is a regular contributor to German Marshall Fund of the United States’ on Turkey policy brief series, and a columnist for Middle East Eye.

  Senior Associate Fellow at Al Sharq Stra...

• Emad Shahin

  Emad Shahin

  Senior Fellow at Georgetown University

  Emad Shahin is the Dean of the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation and a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University. Before joining CIS, he was the Hasib Sabbagh Distinguished Visiting Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies, visiting professor of Political Science at Georgetown University and the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics. He is tenured professor of public policy, The American University in Cairo (on leave). Shahin holds a Ph.D. (1989) from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, M.A. (1983) and BA (1980) from the American University in Cairo. He has taught in leading universities in the United States including Harvard, Notre Dame, Georgetown, George Washington, and Boston University. His research and teaching interests focus on Islam and Politics Comparative Politics, Democracy and Political Reform in Muslim societies, and Political Economy of the Middle East.

  Senior Fellow at Georgetown University

• Shadi Hamid

  Shadi Hamid

  a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy and the author of the new book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World(St. Martin’s Press). He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic. His previous book was Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2014). An expert on Islamist movements, Hamid served as director of research at the Brookings Doha Center until January 2014. With Will McCants, he currently co-leads the Brookings "Rethinking Political Islam" initiative. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and his Ph.D. in political science from Oxford University.

• Rachel Havrelock

  Rachel Havrelock

  Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she serves as the founder and director of the UIC Freshwater Lab.  She is the author of River Jordan: The Mythology of a Dividing Line (University of Chicago Press) that examines the Jordan River as a border and the Jordan Valley as an integrated watershed. As a member of the International Advisory Council of Ecopeace Middle East, she is involved with efforts to remediate the Jordan River and support sustainable regional development.  She brought mayors from the Jordan Valley together with mayors from the Great Lakes basin at her 2015 summit, Water after Borders, where the mayors signed a signature piece of water diplomacy, the “Sister Waters Agreement.”  During a 2013 sabbatical, Rachel pursued research on the Iraq Petroleum Pipeline that once ran from Kirkuk to Haifa at the British National Archive, in Israeli and Jordanian archives, and by traveling the pipeline route and interviewing those living on and around it.  She plans to publish this research as a book entitled Pipeline: How Oil Created the Modern Middle East and How Water Can Transform It.   Rachel served as a 2011 Department of State Professional Fellow and was awarded a 2014 Alumni Impact Award. Her research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, FLAS, the UIC Institute for the Humanities, the UIC Dean’s Research Award, and the University of Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).

• Steven A. Cook

  Steven A. Cook

  Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Cook is the author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Oxford University Press, Fall 2011), which won the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's gold medal in 2012, and Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). His new book, Thwarted Dreams: Violence and Authoritarianism in the New Middle East, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016. Cook has published widely in foreign policy journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers, and he is a frequent commentator on radio and television. He also currently writes the blog,From the Potomac to the Euphrates. Prior to joining CFR, Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–2002) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–1996). Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and both an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.