Category: Issues

Vali Nasr, Professor of International Politics at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

The Middle East After The Arab Spring: Economics, Identity, Strategy

Vali Nasr is considered by many American leaders to be the leading foreign policy analyst of the Middle East. Nasr has testified before Congress, advised the President Obama and Vice-President Biden on sectarian violence in Iraq and U.S.-Iran relations, briefed the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of Defense as well as private sector executives.  Nasr contributes regularly to The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal as well as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Time. He has authored several cutting edge books on Muslim politics and Islam, including The Shia Revival and his latest, Forces of Fortune, in which he argues that the rising Muslim Middle class which values peace and stability, is the best counterweight to radical Islamic extremism. He is has also appeared on CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.

Born in Iran, Nasr is a professor of international relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. From 2009 to 2011, he was an advisor Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nasr served previously as adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center at Harvard 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 received a BA from Tufts University and a masters from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and earned his PhD from MIT in political science.