Fouad Ajami

Biography: 

Fouad Ajami passed away on June 22, 2014.  He was the Herbert and Jane Dwight Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. From 1980 to 2011 he was director of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Arab Predicament, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon, Beirut: City of Regrets, The Dream Palace of the Arabs, and The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. His most recent publication is In This Arab Time: The Pursuit of Deliverance (Hoover Institution Press, 2014). His writings also include some four hundred essays on Arab and Islamic politics, US foreign policy, and contemporary international history. Ajami has received numerous awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award for public service (2011), the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (2011), the Bradley Prize (2006), the National Humanities Medal (2006), and the MacArthur Fellows Award (1982). His research has charted the road to 9/11, the Iraq war, and the US presence in the Arab-Islamic world.

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Recent Commentary

The Arab Spring: What We Know Now

by Fouad Ajamivia Advancing a Free Society
Saturday, April 7, 2012

When the Arab spring began a year ago, the Western world was shocked. Liberty seemed to have bypassed the Arabs; they had seemed resigned to tyranny. But once unleashed, the upheaval knew no restraint, and there were both mayhem and promise in the streets of the Arab world.

Obama on podium

The Arab Spring: What We Know Now

by Fouad Ajamivia Hoover Digest
Friday, April 6, 2012

One year later, much of the conventional wisdom about the uprisings has been proven wrong. By Fouad Ajami.

Analysis and Commentary

Obama and the Eisenhower Standard

by Fouad Ajamivia Wall Street Journal
Monday, April 2, 2012

When crafting foreign policy, the late president didn't 'give a damn how the election goes'...

Fouad Ajami on CNN

by Fouad Ajamivia Advancing a Free Society
Friday, March 16, 2012

The relevant portion begins at about the 4:15 mark.

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Analysis and Commentary

America's Alibis for Not Helping Syria

by Fouad Ajamivia Wall Street Journal
Friday, February 24, 2012

We can lend a hand to its tyrannized people or risk turning the country into a devil's playground of religious extremism...

Fouad Ajami on Syria (CNN)

by Fouad Ajamivia Advancing a Free Society
Friday, February 24, 2012

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Analysis and Commentary

The Rescue

by Fouad Ajamivia Advancing a Free Society
Thursday, February 23, 2012

An irresistible force has clashed with an immovable object, and the stalemate will have to be broken by outsiders...

Introduction

What Can Be Done About Syria?

by Fouad Ajamivia The Caravan
Thursday, February 23, 2012

For the first Caravan symposium we take up the ordeal of Syria, now nearly a full year into a terrible struggle between a dictatorial regime and a rebellion determined to overthrow it. What can be done about Syria? 

Featured Analysis

The Rescue

by Fouad Ajamivia The Caravan
Thursday, February 23, 2012

In the matter of Syria, the moral simplicity and clarity have been overwhelmed by overthinking the strategic complications – always the companion and the alibi for passivity.  The Assad tyranny is living on borrowed time, the very laws of gravity conspire against it.  It may c

CNN Interview of Fouad Ajami

by Fouad Ajamivia Advancing a Free Society
Wednesday, February 22, 2012

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