Fouad Ajami

Fouad Ajami is a political scientist who specializes in Middle East affairs and culture. Ajami studies Arab political thought and the relations between the West and the Islamic World. He also has examined Egypt’s political economy, the politics of Islam, and the history and political thought of the Shia. He is the author of several books, including The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thinking and Practice Since 1967 (1981, rev. ed., 1992), The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (1986), Beirut: City of Regrets (1988), The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (1998), and The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (2006). He has written several influential essays on the Middle East and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and other periodicals. Ajami is the Majid Khadduri Professor of Islamic Studies and the director of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. He is also a consultant for CBS on Middle East affairs and, since 1989, has been a contributing editor for the U.S. News and World Report. He served previously as a faculty member of Princeton University’s Department of Politics and as a research fellow at The Lehrman Institute. Ajami received a Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Washington.