Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he was Associate Professor of Government and Director of the Near Eastern Studies Program at Cornell University and a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He has taught at several universities including the Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science.

Among his publications are Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (Cornell University Press, 1995); Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. with Michael Barnett (Cornell University Press, 2002); The Stakes: America and the Middle East (Westview Press, forthcoming), and numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs.

Besides his academic activities, Professor Telhami has been active in the foreign policy arena and has been a contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. While a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, he served as advisor to the United States delegation to the United Nations during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, and was on the staff of Congressman Lee Hamilton. He is the author of a report on Persian Gulf security for the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-drafter of another Council report on the Arab-Israeli peace process. In addition, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Board of Human Rights Watch. He also has a weekly radio commentary that broadcasts all over the Middle East.