Vali Nasr is an Iranian-born, leading expert on the Middle East, a best-selling author, Dean of the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a member of the U.S. State Department's influential Policy Planning Board. He is also a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and a contributor to Bloomberg View. He has taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the University of San Diego, and was a Senior Fellow at the Belfar Center at Harvard University, as well as at Stanford University. He served as a senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2009 and 2011 and is a life member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He lives in Washington, D.C.