Marvin Zonis
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Marvin Zonis (September 18, 1936 – November 15, 2020)[1] was an American political economist who focused on Middle Eastern politics and history and an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he taught courses on international political economy, leadership, and e-commerce. He was the first professor at the Business School to teach a course on digital technologies.[2][3][4][5]
He was educated at Yale University, the Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in political science, and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he received training in psychoanalysis.[4]
Zonis also consulted to corporations and professional asset management firms throughout the world, helping them to identify, assess, and manage their political risks.[4][6] Zonis was a member of the Board of Directors of CNA Financial, the global insurance and financial services firm,[7] and was also on the Board of Advisors of Syntek Capital, a European Private Equity Venture Capital Firm focusing on TMT (telecom, media and technology). He was a member of the Board of Advisers for the Comptroller General of the United States at the GAO and also a Fellow of PwC-Diamond Advisory Services, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Fondation des États-Unis, Paris, and the Board of Advisers of the Centre for Business Management, Queen Mary University of London. He was also a prominent member of the International Society of Political Psychology.
Zonis wrote extensively on globalization, digital technologies, emerging markets, Middle East politics, the oil industry, Russia, and U.S. foreign policy. He was a leading authority on the Middle East, and spent most of his life studying the volatile mix of Islam, terrorism, and the Middle East. In his youth he lived in Iran, hitchhiked through Afghanistan, studied Islam in Iraq and travelled extensively throughout other parts of the region as well.[8]
He received the Quantrell Award.[9]
Death
Zonis died on November 15, 2020.[1]
