Nader Hashemi

Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute. Dr. Hashemi was previously the founding Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. While there, he was also Co-Director of the Religion and International Affairs certificate program, as well as the Political Theory Initiative. His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on the global rise of authoritarianism, religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future(Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East(Oxford University Press, 2017) and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies(Routledge, 2023). He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, Pacifica Radio, Alternative Radio and the BBC and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Al Jazeera Online, CNN.com among other media outlets.

Abstract

Professor Hashemi framed the war in Gaza as “the great moral crisis of the 21st century,” arguing that the ongoing violence has profoundly destabilized the Middle East and undermined prospects for democratic development. He warned that cycles of war and occupation fuel polarization and radicalization, conditions that authoritarian regimes exploit to justify repression and eliminate dissent.

Hashemi contended that a just and durable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for democratic transformation across the region. Without addressing these root causes, any movement toward political reform will remain fragile and easily reversed.