Vali Nasr

Vali Nasr
File:Vali Nasr 2013.jpg
8th Dean of Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 July 2012 (2012-07-01)
Preceded by	Jessica Einhorn
Personal details
Born	(1960-12-20) 20 December 1960 Tehran, Iran
Nationality	American
Children	3
Alma mater	Tufts University (BA) The Fletcher School (MALD) MIT (PhD)
Religion	Islam
Notable work(s)	The Shia Revival
Awards	Ellis Island Medal of Honor
Website	SAIS Leadership

Vali Reza Nasr (Persian: ولی‌ رضا نصر‎‎, born 20 December 1960) is an American academic and author specializing in the Middle East and the Islamic world. He is currently Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow in foreign policy at Brookings Institution.

Biography

Son of Iranian academic Hossein Nasr, Vali Nasr was born in Tehran in 1960, went to school in England at age 16, and immigrated to the U.S. after the 1979 Revolution. He received his BA from Tufts University in International Relations summa cum laude. He earned his masters in International Economics and Middle East Studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1984, then went on to earn his PhD in Political Science from MIT in 1991.

Career

He taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, University of San Diego and the Naval Postgraduate School and was a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, as well as Stanford University and University of California, San Diego prior to being appointed dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in March 2012.

Nasr is a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board and served as senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, between 2009 and 2011. He is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (2013), Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World (2009), The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (2006), and several other books on Iran, Pakistan, Islam and politics, and Middle East politics and economy.

Publications

Nasr is a political scientist by training and has focused on comparative politics and international relations of the Middle East. He is the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It will Mean for Our World, The Shia Revival, The Islamic Leviathan, Democracy in Iran, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan, and Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism. Nasr's writing has addressed politics and Islamic activism in Pakistan, in Iran and throughout the Arab world. He has highlighted the role of states in Islamization and the importance of sectarian identity in Middle East politics, including the growing importance of Shia politics following the Iraq war. His book Forces of Fortune focused on the importance of a new middle class to future of the Muslim world.

He appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 1 August 2006, 22 September 2009, and 25 April 2013.

Personal life

Nasr is the son of Hossein Nasr, a prominent Iranian academic and scholar of religion. He is married to Darya, a technology executive. They have three children, sons Amir and Hossein, and daughter Donia.

Publications

• Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Doubleday, 2013)
• Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It will Mean for Our World (Free Press, 2009), also published under the titles The Rise of Islamic Capitalism: Why the New Middle Class is Key to Defeating Extremism and Meccanomics: The March of the New Muslim Middle Class in the U.K.
• The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam will Shape the Future (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
• Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (coauthor, 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)[6]
• The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan (University of California Press, 1994)[7]
• Oxford Dictionary of Islam (editor, Oxford University Press, 2003)[8]
• Expectation of the Millennium: Shi'ism in History (coeditor, State University of New York Press, 1989)[9]
• "When Shiites Rise" from Foreign Affairs
• "The Cost of Containing Iran" (coauthored with Ray Takeyh) from Foreign Affairs
• "Who Wins in Iraq? Iran" from Foreign Policy
• "The Rise of Muslim Democracy" from Journal of Democracy
• "The Conservative Consolidation in Iran" from Survival
• "The Regional Implications of Shi'a Revival in Iraq" from The Washington Quarterly
• "Iran’s Peculiar Election: The Conservative Wave Rolls On" from Journal of Democracy
• "The Democracy Debate in Iran" (coauthor) from Middle East Policy Journal
• "Military Rule, Islamism, and Democracy in Pakistan" from The Middle East Journal
• "Lessons from the Muslim World" from Dædalus

External links

• Vali Nasr on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Nasr's SAIS bio
• Nasr review in NYT
• New York Times Profile