Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC, Distinguished Chair for Middle East Studies at the US Naval Academy, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. According to the BBC he is the “world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam.” A former high commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, he has advised Prince Charles and met with President George W. Bush on Islam. He has taught at Princeton, Harvard, and Cambridge Universities and is an award winning film and documentary maker.

Ambassador Ahmed is regularly interviewed on major networks including BBC and CNN, and has appeared several times on the Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2005 he was awarded the inaugural Purpose Prize along with Judea Pearl, the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, with whom he tours promoting interfaith dialogue. Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, his latest book, was published in 2007 by the Brookings Institution Press. He is currently conducting a year long study of Islam in America with a group of young Americans which can be followed at www.journeyintoamerica.wordpress.com

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