Vali Nasr is a nonresident senior fellow at the South Asia Center. He is also the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins-SAIS. Between 2012 and 2019 he served as the Dean of the School, and between 2009 and 2011 as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He has previously taught at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, Naval Postgraduate School, Stanford University, University of California San Diego and University of San Diego.

He is the author of several books including, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat; Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Muslim Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World; The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future; Vanguard of Islamic revolution: Jamaat Islami of Pakistan; Islamic Leviathan: Islam and State Power; and Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: Jamaat Islami of Pakistan. He is also the author several book chapters and articles in peer reviewed journals, as well as commentary in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Nasr has been the recipient of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. He is a Carnegie Scholar for 2006. He received his BA from Tufts University in International Relations summa cum laude and was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa in 1983. He earned his masters from the Fletcher School of Law in and Diplomacy in international economics and Middle East studies in 1984, and his PhD from MIT in political science in 1991.