Dr Walid Phares

Phares, who served as a foreign policy aide to Mitt Romney in 2012, is perhaps the most controversial of Trump’s advisors. He was the subject of a 2011 Mother Jones story that said he has ties to a right-wing Lebanese militia accused of committing war crimes against Muslims during that country’s bloody 15-year civil war. Phares did not respond to requests for comment about the story. Officials at the Council on American-Islamic Relations have condemned Phares – like Trump – for his comments about Muslims. Phares is a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. He’s also a regular on Fox News and tried to tamp down Trump’s calls to reinstate the torture of terrorism suspects after last month’s bombings in Brussels. He taught Global Strategies at the National Defense University in Washington DC since 2006, lectured at the National Intelligence University since 2008 and he has been a Professor of Middle East Studies, Ethnic and Religious Conflict at the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) from 1993 to 2006. Professor Phares has also been a senior lecturer on the War on Terror and Global Conflicts at the LLS Program of FAU and the IRP Program at the University of Miami. Previously he taught at Florida International University in 1991 and 1992 and at Saint Joseph University in Beirut in the 1980s. Professor Walid Phares was a Senior Fellow and the director for Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington (2001-2010). He was also a Visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracies in Brussels (2006-2010).