Robert Springborg is a Research Fellow at the Italian Institute of International Affairs and an Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University. He has held various academic and consultancy positions focused on the Middle East, including the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Director of the American Research Center in Egypt. He was a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Professor of Middle East Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He was a consultant on Middle East governance and politics for USAID, the U.S. State Department, the UNDP, and UK government departments, and is a member of the Rowaq Arabi Editorial Board. He is the author of Egypt (2018) and Political Economies of the Middle East and North Africa (2020). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Egypt (2021) and co-editor of The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (2021), The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: Legacies and Consequences of the Fight for Independence (2023), and Security Assistance in the Middle East (2023).  

Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist, scholar, and activist whose work focuses on the security sector, labor movements, and the political economy of militarized state power in Egypt. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin, where his research examined the restructuring of Egypt’s policing and military institutions following the 2013 coup.

His forthcoming book, Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi’s New Republic (Verso, May 2026), analyzes the consolidation of authoritarian rule through security-sector expansion and counterrevolutionary governance. El-Hamalawy has written extensively in Arabic and English on authoritarianism, social movements, and foreign policy, with work published in leading international media outlets and academic venues.

He also authors 3arabawy, a newsletter providing in-depth analysis of developments within Egypt’s military and police institutions, alongside book reviews and an accompanying audio podcast. Beyond academia and journalism, el-Hamalawy has documented labor strikes and grassroots activism for over two decades. His work bridges scholarship and activism, offering a grounded analysis of state repression and resistance in contemporary Egypt.

May Darwich is Associate Professor in International Relations of the Middle East at the University of Birmingham. Her research engages Middle Eastern cases to advance debates in International Relations theory, focusing on themes such as threat perception, alliance politics, identity, and foreign policy. She is the author of Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region (Cambridge, 2019).

Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project.  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Alexandra Domike Blackman is an Assistant Professor in Cornell University’s Department of Government. In 2019-2020, she was a Post-Doctoral Associate at New York University - Abu Dhabi. Blackman’s work focuses on the development of religious identities in the political sphere, the challenges facing female politicians, and political party development in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Politics & Religion, and Journal of Peace Research. Blackman was a Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellow in Cairo, Egypt (2010-2011) and a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC (2011-2012).

Salma Mousa is a scholar of social cohesion — typically using field experiments and partnerships with local governments and NGOs to explore the question of how to build it in the Middle East and beyond. Currently an Assistant Professor at UCLA's political science department, her research has been published in Science and covered by The Economist, BBC, Der Spiegel, the Times of London, and PBS NOVA. Mousa received her PhD from Stanford University's political science department in 2020 and was previously an Assistant Professor of political science at Yale University.

Christiana Parreira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the role of local political institutions and actors in governance, looking primarily at post-conflict contexts in the Middle East and North Africa. Her forthcoming book project examines how local governments and elections facilitated predatory state-building practices in Lebanon. In other research, she examines determinants of governance quality and distributive outcomes in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Global South. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2020. Before joining the Graduate Institute, she served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a pre-doctoral associate at the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative.

David Siddhartha Patel is a residential visiting scholar at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses on religious authority, social order, identity, and state-building in the contemporary Middle East. His book Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq (Cornell University Press, 2022) examines the role of mosques and clerical networks in generating order after state collapse and is based upon independent field research he conducted in Basra. It won the Best Book Award from the APSA MENA Politics section and honorable mention for the Political Networks section’s Best Book Award. Patel is currently working on two book-length projects. The first, “Defunct States of the Middle East,” chronicles the more than two dozen territorial polities that disappeared from the map of the region after 1918: how they came to be, how they died, and how they are remembered today. The second, “The Market for Ayatollahs,” examines competition and collusion between Shi‘a religious authorities in Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran and how that relationship constrains varieties of Shi‘ism in the world today. Before joining MEI, he was a senior fellow and associate director for research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and, previously, an assistant professor of government at Cornell University. He holds a BA in economics and political science from Duke University and a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

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Dr. Rajaie Batniji, MD, DPhil, is a Gaza-born physician, entrepreneur, and political scientist. He is the founder of healthcare technology companies, and is currently leading a company that is improving access and care for people covered by Medicaid benefits. As an entrepreneur, he has raised several hundred million dollars to develop and scale technology-enabled solutions for improving American healthcare.

Dr. Batniji is a Board Director at UNRWA USA, Refugees International, and the Gaza Student Support Network. Batniji’s research — including research on health in the occupied Palestinian territory — has been published in top international medical journals, including The Lancet, Health Affairs, British Medical Journal, and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. His work has also been featured in major media, including the New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, and STAT, among others.

Batniji was previously clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University. He holds BA and MA degrees in History from Stanford University, an MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and a doctorate in Politics and International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.

Dr. Mohammad Subeh is an Emergency Physician and Traumatologist with over a decade of humanitarian work delivering critical, time-sensitive healthcare in low-resource environments. Recently, he served on multiple medical missions to Gaza during the Gaza genocide, establishing field hospitals in Rafah and Deir Al-Balah, and recently returned from a medical mission in southern Lebanon. While there, Dr. Subeh treated thousands of patients and witnessed the systematic decimation of the population and infrastructure and the unprecedented obstruction of humanitarian work and aid delivery on the ground.

Dr. Subeh’s research has been published in over 15 peer-reviewed medical journals and 2 textbooks. He has lectured on topics ranging from the use of point-of-care ultrasound technology in managing life-threatening injuries to the long-term epidemiological impacts of natural and man-made disasters on at-risk populations. He advises multiple health tech companies in Silicon Valley. He holds a BS in Human Biology, MA in Sociology, and MS in Epidemiology from Stanford University. He received his Medical Doctorate from Oregon Health and Science University, completed residency in Emergency Medicine at The University of Chicago, and Ultrasound Fellowship at the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is the author of State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics.

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford . His research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, A.M. from Harvard University in 1974, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. He taught at Stanford from 1983 to 2019 with a hiatus as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo in 2006-08.

Samia Errazzouki is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Humanities Center at Stanford University. She holds a PhD in History from UC Davis and MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. She is also the social sciences editor for the Journal of North African Studies and co-editor with Jadaliyya. Samia is a former Morocco-based journalist, where she reported for the Associated Press and, later, for Reuters.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University.  
 

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Salam Fayyad is a Visiting Senior Scholar and Daniella Lipper Coules '95 Distinguished Visitor in Foreign Affairs at the Princeton School of Public Affairs. An economist by training, he served as Minister of Finance for the Palestinian Authority from 2002-2005 and as Prime Minister from 2007 to 2013. During his tenure as finance minister and prime minister, he introduced a number of economic and governance reforms. Shortly after stepping down as Prime Minister in June 2013, he founded "Future for Palestine," a nonprofit development foundation. Prior to that, he served with the International Monetary Fund from 1987 to 2001, including as the IMF resident representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1996 to 2001. Currently, he is also a Distinguished Statesman with the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. He leads the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. At FSI, he leads the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, based at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for more than six years. He also co-leads with (Eileen Donahoe) the Global Digital Policy Incubator based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His latest edited book (with Orville Schell), China's Influence and American Interests (Hoover Press, 2019), urges a posture of constructive vigilance toward China’s global projection of “sharp power,” which it sees as a rising threat to democratic norms and institutions. He offers a massive open online course (MOOC) on Comparative Democratic Development through the edX platform and is now writing a textbook to accompany it.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford, and she teaches in the Department of Political Science and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Amir Magdy Kamel joins ARD to discuss his recently released book, Floundering Stability: US Foreign Policy in Egypt (University of Michigan Press, 2023). 

The United States has a record of pursuing global stability through international relations. This commitment is reflected in a US type of foreign policy that uses economic tools to pursue stability goals. To better understand the effectiveness of this notion, this talk will unpack the conceptual and contextual foundations of what Amir Magdy Kamel refers to as the US ‘Stability Policy’—how it evolved over time and how it was implemented in Egypt. From here, Kamel will reflect on what his book’s findings demonstrate for the relationship between economics and stability, along with how and why the stability policy performed the way it did in Egypt.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Amir Magdy Kamel currently holds visiting roles at Stanford University and the University of San Francisco. He is also an Associate Professor in the School of Security Studies and a Fellow in the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London. His research projects focus on two areas: political and economic issues across the Middle East, including EU and US foreign policy towards the region, and transformative technologies and how they impact states and policymaking. Dr. Kamel also has over a decade of experience providing advice, analysis, and consultations to various government agencies, economic consultancies, and NGOs.