About the Instructor

• Dr. Joshua Teitelbaum is a leading historian and expert on the modern Middle East. He teaches modern Middle Eastern history in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. Prof. Teitelbaum has a long association with Stanford University and the Hoover Institution. For many years he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Political Science, visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and a contributor to the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World at Hoover. He has held visiting positions at Cornell University, the University of Washington, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Prof. Teitelbaum serves on the editorial board of Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape (Hoover Institution Press, 2010) and has written for Cambridge University’s Historical Journal. Prof. Teitelbaum’s forthcoming book is The Saudi Arabian National Guard: Tribalism, the Royal Family, and Politics in Modern Saudi Arabia (Stanford University Press).
   
  An engineer by profession and chairman of Aquatech, Toni Nissi has devoted his time and energy to the betterment and stability of Lebanon as a state and nation. He is the President of the Committee for the UN Security Council Resolutions on Lebanon, the Secretary General of the National Council for the Cedar Revolution, and the President of the International Christian Union in charge of Middle Eastern affairs. He has worked on many sensitive files with the UN Security Council (UNSC), the United States Government, and the European Union. He lobbied for the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, and UNSC Resolutions 1559, 1680, and 1701. His writings, analysis and interviews have appeared in major publications and television stations including USA today, New Yorker, Frontpage magazine, Family Security Matters , Counter Terrorism blogs , MTV, LBCI, France 24 , Al Hurra, and Newsmax. He resides with his family in East Beirut.
   
  
  Robert G. Rabil, Ph.D. is an internationally renowned scholar. His books have been highly commended and reviewed by major academic journals. He is considered one of the leading experts on Salafism, radical Islam, and U.S.-Arab-Israeli relations. He earned doctoral degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. In May 2012, he was conferred with an honorary doctoral degree in humanities from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and in 2022 he won the FAU Scholar of the Year award. He is a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University.