Holly Dagres is a nonresident fellow with the Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is an expert on U.S.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

Alireza Nader is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Iran and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Hussein A. Amery is a professor and director of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Division (HASS) at Colorado School of Mines.

Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American writer and a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Akbar Ahmed is a diplomat and the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. He is an expert on contemporary Islam.

Hisham Aidi is a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Samer S. Shehata is the Colin Mackey and Patricia Molina de Mackey Associate Professor of Middle East studies and the Middle East Studies program coordinator at the University of Oklahoma.