Who We Are
Eva Bellin, Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics
Bellin is the author of Stalled Democracy: Capital Labor and the Paradox of State-Sponsored Development and has written extensively on the authoritarian persistence in the Middle East, the political economy of development, the evolution of civil society, and the politics of cultural change. She has been a Carnegie Scholar and a Princeton University Fellow and has served as an editor of the journal Comparative Politics since 2005. She previously taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Harvard University, Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Kristina Cherniahivsky, Associate Director
Cherniahivsky earned an MBA from Simmons School of Management in 2001. Previously she managed the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and worked in Eastern Europe on issues around democracy and civil society in post-communist states.
Robert L. Cohen, Editor
Cohen has edited reference books, scholarly and general-interest non-fiction, and public policy and think tank publications on international relations, urban affairs, and other specialties for over a quarter-century. He has also written and edited definitions for the Random House Unabridged and other dictionaries; contributed a monograph on anti-poverty policy history to Inventing Community Renewal: The Trials and Errors That Shaped the Modern Community Development Corporation; written a documentary for NPR and feature stories and reviews for magazines and newspapers; and produced a compilation CD and over 100 radio programs.
Shai Feldman, Judith and Sidney Swartz Director
Feldman is the Judith and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. He is also a Senior Fellow and a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2001-2003, Feldman served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Short C.V.
Nader Habibi, Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East
Before joining the Crown Center in 2007 Habibi was Managing Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division in Global Insight. He is a regional economist with concentration on Middle East and North Africa. His recent research projects have focused on operations of sovereign wealth funths in Arab Countries and US-Arab economic relations. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and a graduate degree in systems engineering from Michigan State University and has worked as a research fellow at the Middle East Council at Yale University.
Marilyn R. Horowitz, Senior Department Associate
Horowitz is a native of New York City and now lives in Waltham, MA. She is an avid photographer, designs jewelry, is a member of the Dog Writers Association of America (her 2007 Sunnybank Calendar won the Calendar Category of the 2006 DWAA Writing Contest), and has a monthly column in a professional Collie publication with national circulation.
Kanan Makiya, Faculty Chair
The Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, Baghdad-born Makiya wrote Republic of Fear, which became a bestseller after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991.
Payam Mohseni, Junior Research Fellow
Mohseni holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University’s Department of Government. He is also a member of the Iran Study Group at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). His research interests include authoritarianism and democratization, political economy of development, and Middle East politics. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation analyzing the dynamics of regime resiliency and transformation in hybrid regimes, based on two years of fieldwork in Iran. Mohseni received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
Aria Nakissa, Junior Research Fellow
Nakissa received his Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in 2012. He also holds a JD from Harvard Law School and an MA in Shari’ah Law from the International Islamic University in Malaysia. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among religious scholars at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, Nakissa’s research examines how Islamic legal discourses have been transformed by changes in modern educational practice.
Benjamin Rostoker, Program Coordinator
Rostoker received his B.A. and M.A. in Politics from Brandeis University in 2005. He has worked with conflict resolution programs and organizations including: the Israeli Palestinian Negotiating Partners; Middle East Education through Technology; and Mercy Corps Conflict Management Group. In 2007, Rostoker was a teaching and research assistant at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.
Abdel Monem Said Aly, Senior Fellow
Said Aly is Chairman of the Board, CEO, and Director of the Regional Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. He is also the Chairman of Al-Masry Al-Youm, a leading Arabic language daily newspaper in Egypt and a Senior Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Previously, Said Aly was the President of the Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies in Cairo and the Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Al-Ahram Newspaper and Publishing House. He was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., in 2004 and a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in 2003.
Khalil Shikaki, Senior Fellow
Shikaki has directed the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah since 2000, and has conducted more than one hundred polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1993. A world-renowned expert on Palestinian public opinion and a widely published author, he has taught at several institutions, including Birzeit University, An-Najah National University, the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and the University of South Florida. He also was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., in 2002.
Naghmeh Sohrabi, Associate Director for Research
Sohrabi was a postdoctoral fellow at the Crown Center from 2005-2007. She received her Ph.D. in history and Middle East studies from Harvard University in 2005. Her dissertation received an honorable mention from the Foundation for Iranian Studies. Sohrabi is currently under contract with Oxford University Press to publish her book on 19th century Persian travelers to Europe. She has taught courses at Harvard University, Skidmore College, and most recently at Brandeis.