Bernard Haykel
American historian (born 1968)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bernard Haykel (born 1968)[1] is professor of Near Eastern Studies and the director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University.[2][3] He has been described as "the foremost secular authority on the Islamic State’s ideology" by journalist Graeme C.A. Wood.[4]
Early life
Haykel was born to a Lebanese Christian father and a Polish Jewish mother,[5] he grew up in Lebanon and the United States.[4] He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Yemen in 1992–1993. He obtained a bachelor degree in International Politics at Georgetown University, and MA, M Phil and, in 1998, Ph.D. degrees in Islamic and Middle-Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford.
Career
After working as a post-doctoral research fellow at Oxford University in Islamic Studies, he joined New York University in 1998 as associate professor before taking up his post at Princeton.[3] He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2010.[6] He is a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.[7]
In addition to English, Haykel is fluent in Arabic and French and has taught advanced level Arabic at Georgetown, Oxford and Princeton.[8]
According to BBC News, Haykel speaks regularly to Mohammed bin Salman, the authoritarian ruler of Saudi Arabia.[9]
Personal life
Haykel is married to Navina Najat Haidar,[5] daughter of the former Indian Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar.
Books
- Saudi Arabia in Transition; Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change. (Cambridge University Press, 2015) co-editor with Thomas Hegghammer, and Stéphane Lacroix.[10]
- Revival and Reform in Islam: the Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkānī (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Cambridge University Press, 2003).[11][12]
