Our Team

Staff

JOSEPH BRAUDE

Center founder and President Joseph Braude is an expert on the nexus of culture and politics in Arab societies and an active presence in the region’s media and policy debates. He studied Near Eastern languages at Yale and Arabic and Islamic history at Princeton. He developed his Arabic to broadcast quality over a seven-year stint on Moroccan national radio and added Persian to his Arabic and Hebrew as a graduate student at the University of Tehran.

Braude’s most recent book, Reclamation: A Cultural Policy for Arab-Israeli Partnership (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2019) presents a strategy on how to roll back generations of antisemitic and rejectionist messaging in Arab media, mosques, and schools. His three prior books include a prescription for post-Saddam institution building in Iraq (The New Iraq, Basic Books, 2003), a study of crime and punishment in Casablanca (The Honored Dead, Random House, 2011), and an assessment of prospects to foster liberal social trends through Arab media (Broadcasting Change, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

MICHAEL NAHUM

Serving as Chief Operating Officer, Michael Nahum brings Arabic and Hebrew fluency and a decade’s experience engaging with the region’s media to the CPC. As a Senior Arabic Linguist with ATS and AECOM, he provided high-level U.S. government clients with timely and layered analyses of regional crises and emerging trends. His areas of expertise include Middle Eastern cultural topography, Syrian militia dynamics, and mapping the Arabic social media environment. Afterwards, he helped lead the MENA team at Dataminr Inc., a realtime information discovery company with military, corporate, and public relations clientele.

Prior to joining the CPC, Nahum spent two years in Arab capitals. He developed his fluency in modern Arabic while living in Damascus during the early phases of the Syrian civil war. He studied Classical Arabic at the Qasid institute in Amman Jordan and in Sanaa, Yemen at the Yemen College of Middle East Studies. He also lived for two years in Israel, gaining fluency in Hebrew at Haifa University and the IDC in Herzliya. He holds an MA in Arabic from the University of Maryland in College Park, and a BA in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from Brandeis University.

HADEEL OUEIS

Author and media personality Hadeel Oueis leads Arabic communications on behalf of the Center. An advocate for liberal democracy in her native Syria during the historic uprising against Bashar al-Assad, she subsequently relocated to the United States and developed her career in Arab media as an analyst of American foreign policy. She serves as a reporter the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, and now hosts biweekly programs on two leading independent news networks in the region: Iraq’s Al-Sharqiya and Yemen’s ATV. She appears frequently as a commentator on some of the region’s largest indigenous outlets as well as the Arabic editions of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Al-Hurra.

Oueis holds a BA in sociology from the University of Aleppo.

Senior Fellows

REBAR SALAHADDIN ABDALLAH

After receiving his Bachelors in Architectural Design from Salahaddin University in Erbil, Rebar Salahuddin Abdallah pursued a double degree humanities Masters program, between Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus, Germany and Alexandria University in Egypt, aiming to study models of social healing in post-conflict environments. Over eight years’ work with NGOs in Kurdistan, he has supported women’s advancement, youth empowerment, and the resettlement of refugees.

As part of his current work with the Center, Mr. Abdallah is mapping the remnants of Sulaymaniya’s Jewish quarter. The project includes local research, outreach to Kurdish Jewish families and scholars outside Iraq, and an exploration of the German Stolperstein project as a model for instilling local awareness of Kurdistan’s more multi-sectarian past.

Board of Directors

DENNIS ROSS — CHAIRMAN

Ambassador Dennis Ross is counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Prior to returning to the Institute in 2011, he served two years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, and a year as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For more than twelve years, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. A highly skilled diplomat, Ambassador Ross was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement; he also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together.

A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, Ambassador Ross worked closely with Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, Ambassador Ross served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. In that capacity, he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition.

GEORGETTE BENNETT

Dr. Georgette Bennett is an award-winning sociologist, criminologist, author, and philanthropist who has worked tirelessly to promote conflict resolution and interfaith relations. She has co-founded a number of major humanitarian institutions, including the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, which has delivered more than $175 million in humanitarian aid for 2.3 million Syrian war victims; the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, the flagship organization for combating religious prejudice; and the Global Covenant of Religions/Global Covenant Partners, which focuses on delegitimizing the use of religion to justify violence and extremism. Bennett served in the U.S. State Department Religion and Foreign Policy initiative’s working group on conflict mitigation, tasked with developing recommendations for the U.S. Secretary of State on countering religion-based violence.

Prior to her career in interreligious relations, she was a renowned criminologist who, among other things, focused on the link between religion and violence. Bennett was awarded the AARP Purpose Prize for her work with the MFA and recently received an Extraordinary Women Award from the 92nd Street Y. In 2021, she was included in the first Forbes 50 Over 50 Women of Impact list and featured by Forbes and MSNBC, along with Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Najat Arafat Khelil, and Susan Rice as women who helped shape the course of modern American foreign policy and human rights. A former Network Correspondent for NBC News, she is the author of nine books and manuals and dozens of articles — most recently, Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By: How One Woman Confronted the Greatest Humanitarian Crisis of Our Time (Wicked Son, 2021). Religicide, co-authored with Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Jerry White, which will be published in Summer 2022. Her book Crimewarps: The Future of Crime in America, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (Knopf Doubleday, 1989).

HEATH GRANT

Heath Grant, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is a seasoned international information program executive. As CEO of Success for Kids, he positioned the group’s unique approach of Social Emotional Learning as one of the most sought-after program partnership opportunities throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. He also served as a senior consultant for the “Culture of Lawfulness Project” sponsored by the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC), a nongovernment educational organization based in Washington. His unique approach to the program was instrumental in helping partners in the Americas and the Middle East foster societal support for the rule of law by engaging media, spiritual leaders, schools, and local government. Today this program continues to reach over one million children per year around the world. 

Dr. Grant has worked with the US Department of State, USAID, National Institute of Justice, and other agencies in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa to develop programs focused on building a culture of lawfulness and countering criminality and corruption.

He is also a board member of the Every Child is Ours Foundation.