Program archives

Dr. Nakhleh retired from the Central Intelligence Agency on June 30, 2006 after fifteen years of service. He had been a Senior Intelligence Officer and Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA, and earlier, was Chief of the Regional Analysis Unit in the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, where he also served as Senior Analyst and Scholar in Residence since September 1993. He was a founding member of the Senior Analytic Service and chaired the first SAS Council. He was awarded several senior intelligence commendation medals. His research has focused on political Islam in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world, as well as on political and educational reform, regime stability, and governance in the greater Middle East. Dr. Nakhleh is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Before joining the CIA in 1993, Dr. Nakhleh was the John L. Morrison Professor of International Studies and a Department Chair at Mount St. Mary's College (MD), where he taught for 26 years. He holds a Ph.D. from the American University, Washington, DC (Internatioal Relations, 1968), an M.A. from Georgetown University (Political Science, 1996), and a B.A. from Saint John's University, Minnesota (Political Science, 1963). Dr. Nakhleh was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow (Bahrain, 1972-73, and Jerusalem, summer 1987), a visiting professor at Bir Zeit University (summer 1977), a Woodrow Wilson Guest Scholar (summer 1979), and a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellow (1979-80).

Dr. Nakhleh's recent books include: The Gulf Cooperation Council: Policies, Problems, and Prospects (1986); and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (1976 -- translated into Arabic and published in Bahrain in March 2006). He is currently working on a manuscript for Princeton titled "Clouded Vision: US Intelligence, Policy, and the Muslim World". He has written over 30 scholarly articles, including in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (1995). Dr. Nakhleh is fluent in Arabic, and speaks Hebrew and Farsi. He is listed in Who's Who in America.