Jon B. Alterman is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is an expert on Middle East politics and was an adviser to the Iraq Study Group.

Bulent Aliriza is director and senior associate of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is an expert in Turkish politics and foreign relations.

Samer Shehata is an assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He teaches courses on comparative and Middle East politics, U.S. policy toward the Middle East, Islamist politics, Egyptian politics and society, culture and politics in the Arab world. He is currently writing a book about the rise and […]

As’ad AbuKhalil is a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock, Calif. He is a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. He writes the blog Angry Arab.

Gideon Rose is managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and an expert on terrorism, among other issues, in the Middle East and South Asia. He is based in New York City.

Michael Radu is co-chairman of the Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. He has studied terrorist groups around the world and is an expert on terrorism and extremism in Turkey.

Sandra Mackey is a freelance journalist who has written widely on Islamic extremism, especially in Iraq and Lebanon. She is the author several books on Islam and politics in the Middle East including Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (2008). She lives in Atlanta, Ga.

Bruce Hoffman is a professor in the security studies program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He teaches graduate courses in terrorism and counterterrorism and insurgency and counterinsurgency, as well as other international security subjects.

The Saban Center for Middle East Policy is based at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit organization that focuses on U.S. foreign policy through funding independent research, publishing and events. It is based in Washington, D.C.