Middle East Strategy at Harvard

Kanan Makiya is the Sylvia Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, and the founding director of The Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes public activities concerning democracy in Iraq. Born in Baghdad, he left Iraq to study architecture at M.I.T, later joining Makiya Associates to design and build projects in the Middle East. In 1981, he gave up the practice of architecture to begin writing Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-seller after Saddam Husain’s invasion of Kuwait. In October 1992, Professor Makiya acted as the convener of the Human Rights Committee of the Iraqi National Congress, a transitional parliament then based in northern Iraq. His third book, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993), was awarded The Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on international relations published in English in 1993. His most recent book, The Rock: A Seventh Century Tale Of Jerusalem (2001) is an historical novel about the interplay of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Professor Makiya has collaborated on two films for television, the most recent of which exposed for the first time the 1988 campaign of mass murder in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. The film was shown in the United States under the title Saddam’s Killing Fields and received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Documentary on Foreign Affairs in 1992. Professor Makiya has written for The Independent, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Times of London.

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