Program archives

Vali Nasr is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations and professor of Middle East and South Asia politics and associate chair of research in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is a specialist on 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, violence, and democratization. In 2006, he was a visiting professor at Stanford University.

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 the editor of The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2003); coeditor of Expectation of the Millenium: Shi 'ism in History (SUNY Press, 1989); and the author of numerous articles in academic journals and encyclopedias. His works have been translated into Arabic, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Urdu.

Dr. Nasr has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and he has provided expert commentary to CNN, BBC, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CBS's Evening News, 60 Minutes, NOW with Bill Moyers, and NBC's Nightly News. He has also been the recipient of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. He is a life 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 Master's 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.