Power Politics: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and leadership in the Muslim World

Part Two of Legal Cultures in Muslim Societies, a series sponsored in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations.

SPEAKER BIOS

Vali 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, most recently The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton, 2006).  He is editor of The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2003); and the author of numerous articles in academic journals and encyclopedias.

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.

Toby Craig Jones is an Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University.  Jones has lived and worked extensively in the Middle East, including several years in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain. His main research interests focus on the history of state-building, politics, and Shia-Sunni relations in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Jones has taught courses on the history of the modern Middle East, Iran and Iraq in the 20th century, the history of oil, and Islam and politics. He worked as the Persian Gulf Analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004-2006 where he wrote about reform and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report, Foreign Affairs, the Arab Reform Bulletin, and elsewhere.

MODERATOR

Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security.  She is the editor of the NYU Review of Law and Security, co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, and editor of the books Al Qaeda Now and The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press). She previously taught courses in the European Studies Department at New York University. She is a former Vice-President of the Soros Foundation/Open Society Institute and the founding director of the Program in International Education. She is a frequent writer and commentator on terrorism, international law, the war on terror, and detainee issues. Her work has been featured in the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The American Prospect, and on the major news channels. She has served as a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NY Council for the Humanities, the NYC Board of Education and USAID.