The Middle East:A Changing Regional Landscape?

Paul Salem

Paul Salem is the Vice President for International Engagement. He served previously as MEI’s President and CEO.  He is currently based in the Middle East and works on building partnerships throughout the region.  His research focuses on issues of political change, transition, and conflict as well as the regional and international relations of the Middle East. Salem is a frequent commentator on US and international media, and is the author and editor of a number of books and reports including Escaping the Conflict Trap: Toward Ending Civil Wars in the Middle East (ed. with Ross Harrison, MEI 2019); Winning the Battle, Losing the War: Addressing the Conditions that Fuel Armed Non State Actors (ed. with Charles Lister, MEI 2019); From Chaos to Cooperation: Toward Regional Order in the Middle East (ed. with Ross Harrison, MEI 2017), Broken Orders: The Causes and Consequences of the Arab Uprisings (In Arabic, 2013), "Thinking Arab Futures: Drivers, scenarios, and strategic choices for the Arab World", The Cairo Review Spring 2019; Bitter Legacy: Ideology and Politics in the Arab World (1994), and Conflict Resolution in the Arab World (ed., 1997).  Prior to joining MEI, Salem was the founding director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon between 2006 and 2013.  From 1999 to 2006, he was director of the Fares Foundation and in 1989-1999 founded and directed the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, Lebanon's leading public policy think tank. Salem is also a musician and composer of Arabic-Brazilian jazz. His music can be found on iTunes.

Education

B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard University

Countries of Expertise

Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran

Issues of Expertise

Social & economic policy, U.S. foreign policy, security, democracy & governance, civil society & human rights

Rabab El Mahdi ’96, ’98

Associate Professor, Political Science Department

The American University in Cairo

Rabab El Mahdi is an associate professor of political science at The American University in Cairo (AUC). She earned her PhD from McGill University in Montreal, where she wrote her dissertation on the impact of neo-liberal economic reconstruction on changing patterns of state-civil society relations in Egypt and Bolivia. Her field of specialization is comparative political economy and development, with a focus on Latin America and the Middle East. El Mahdi’s research interests cover the areas of state-civil society relations, social movements and resistance, as well as the political economy of social policy. Before joining AUC, she worked for several developmental organizations, including Non-governmental organizations and United Nation agencies. Previously she taught at Yale University and was a recipient of a number of fellowships at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency. She is also the recipient of a number of research grants from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Currently, she leads AUC's research project, Alternative Policy Solutions (APS). She serves on the boards of a number of civil society and professional organizations, including the Arab Political Science Network (APSN).