Middle East Strategy at Harvard

Hillel Fradkin is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute where he directs its Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. He is the founder of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, the leading journal on contemporary Islamism (sometimes known as militant or radical Islam) which he co-edits with Husain Haqqani and Eric Brown. He is also general editor of Hudson’s monograph series on contemporary Islam and Islamism as well as the center’s website.

Fradkin received his doctoral degree in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1978 for work done under the direction of the late Pakistani theologian Fazlur Rahman and was also a student of Muhsin Mahdi of Harvard University. His graduate studies included work on the history of Jewish thought. He received a BA in Government from Cornell University.

Prior to joining Hudson in 2004 Fradkin was a fellow at several other research institutes. Fradkin was a member of the faculties of the University of Chicago (1986-1998) and Columbia University/Barnard College (1979-1986.) He has also taught at Yale University and Georgetown University. He was vice-president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and director of its grantmaking program in public policy research (1986-1998.) He served in the US Army from 1969-1972 and was a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He writes on both classical and contemporary Islam as well as Middle Eastern politics, American foreign and security policy and international relations and has lectured widely both in the US and abroad–including France, Great Britain, Germany, Morocco, Turkey and Israel–before academic, public and governmental audiences. In addition to work on Islamic history and thought he has also written on the history of the problematic relationship of religion and politics as well as the history of Jewish thought.

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