Terrorism and Middle East Expert Steven Simon Joins the Council to Study American-Muslim Relations

February 28, 2006— Terrorism expert Steven Simon has joined the Council as senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies. His work will focus on Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as the success of U.S. efforts to defeat radical terrorist groups. “Steven is a multi-talented scholar and policy practitioner,” said Vice President and Director of Studies James M. Lindsay. “His extensive career in government and his writings on security policy in the Near East and South Asia make him an extraordinarily valuable addition to the Studies Program.” 

Simon, currently an adjunct professor of Middle East security studies at Georgetown University, comes to the Council from the RAND Corporation where he specialized in Middle Eastern affairs. Prior to RAND, he was the deputy director and Carol Deane senior fellow in U.S. security studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Before moving to England in 1999, Simon served at the White House for more than five years as director for global issues and senior director for transnational threats. During this period, he was involved in U.S. counterterrorism policy and operations as well as security policy in the Near East and South Asia. These assignments followed a fifteen-year career at the U.S. Department of State.

Simon is the coauthor of The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right (Henry Holt, 2005), which examines the evolution of jihad since 9/11 and America’s response, and is a finalist for the 2005 Lionel Gelber Award. He also coauthored, The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House, 2002), which won the Council’s Arthur Ross Book Award in 2004, and The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State (RAND, 2005). Simon coedited Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change (Oxford University Press/IISS 2003), and Building a Successful Palestinian State (RAND, 2005).

He has published articles in numerous newspapers and journals, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, NewRepublic, National Interest, and World Policy Journal. He is a frequent guest on CNN, BBC, ABC, Fox, NPR, “60 Minutes,” “Nightline,” and the “Lehrer News Hour.”

Simon has a BA from Columbia University in classics and Near Eastern languages, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and an MPA from Princeton University. He was a university fellow at Brown University and an international affairs fellow at Oxford University.

Simon will be based in Washington, DC.