Middle East Scholar Ed Husain to Join Columbia SIPA Faculty as the General Brent Scowcroft Senior Research Scholar

Ed Husain, a leading voice on the Middle East, religion, and global security, will join Columbia SIPA beginning in January 2026.

Husain will be the Scowcroft Scholar at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics (IGP), contributing to ongoing work related to the Middle East, and will teach a new graduate-level course, Islam, Judaism, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Ideals vs. Realities, which invites students to grapple with some of the most contested ideas in contemporary Middle East politics through rigorous, historically grounded comparative studies. 

“My hope is to help students learn how to think, not what to think,” Husain said. “In this course, no serious question is off the table, but every voice is expected to engage with facts, empathy, and respect for the human dignity of all sides.”

Husain is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he focuses on US foreign policy toward the Middle East, Arab-Israeli relations after the Abraham Accords, China-Muslim world dynamics, and Islamist terrorism. He is also a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he has taught courses on global security, Arab-Israeli peace, and the shared intellectual roots of the West and Islam.

“I’m delighted that Ed Husain will be joining the SIPA faculty and IGP,” said SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. “He brings a rare combination of scholarly depth, regional experience, and policy practice, from advising heads of government to engaging with communities on the ground. 

“At a time when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very much on people’s minds, polarizing politics and campuses around the world, his course will offer our students something invaluable: a space for serious, fact-based, and empathetic engagement across lines of identity and belief.”

From 2023 to 2024, Husain served as director of the N7 Initiative, a strategic partnership between the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation and the Atlantic Council established to deepen cooperation between Arab, Muslim, and Israeli leaders following the Abraham Accords.

Earlier in his career, Husain was a senior adviser to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair on issues of extremism and coexistence, and later worked with several European and Middle Eastern governments on counterterrorism and political-ideological strategy. He is the author of several widely acclaimed books, including The Islamist (2007), House of Islam (2018), and Among the Mosques (2021).

Born and educated in the United Kingdom, Husain holds a BA in History and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a PhD in Western Philosophy and Islam from the University of Buckingham, England. He speaks Arabic and has lived for extended periods in Damascus, Jeddah, and other parts of the Middle East, as well as traveling widely from Morocco to Oman.