Dr .Bahman Baktiari
Director, Middle East Center
Professor Bahman Baktiari is Director of the Middle East Center. He received his Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. Before coming to University of Utah in 2009, he was the Director of the School of Policy and International Affairs ( SPIA) at University of Maine. Prior to this, he served as Director of Research for William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce.
His most recent publication, Iranian Society 30 Years after the Revolution: A Surprising Picture , appeared in the Spring 2009 special issue of The Middle East Journal. His forthcoming publications include Shari`a Politics and The Transformation of Islamic Law in Iran, will be published in an edited volume entitled Shari`a Politics: A Comparative Project on the Cultural and Policy Implications of Movements for and Against Islamic Law, edited by Robert Hefner ( 2010). His article “Seeking International Legitimacy: Understanding the Dynamics of Nuclear Nationalism in Iran,” will be published in the Occasional Papers on the Greater Middle East, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Washington, DC. ( 2010).
His article, Globalization and Religion, appeared in an edited volume on Globalization in 2008. He has also published in Current History ( Conservative Revival in Iran -January 2007) and Reform and Democracy in Iran, in Robert Hefner, Remaking Muslim Politics, Princeton University Press, 2005. His book chapter (co-authored with Asef Bayat, American University in Cairo) entitled "Revolutionary Iran and Egypt: Exporting Inspirations and Anxiety", was published in Nikkie Keddie and R. Mathee, edited volume, Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics, University of Washington Press, 2002. His book, Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran: Institutionalization of Factional Politics, was published by the University Press of Florida in 1996. He also co-edited a series of articles entitled "Social and Political Developments in Iran", published in the Fall 2001 issue of the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
Some of his opinion pieces on the Middle East have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the Council on Foreign Relations' Muslim Politics Report, Maine Sunday Telegram, and Al-Ahram weekly. He has also been interviewed on national public television's Jim Lehrer's NewsHour, CNN International, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Congressional Research. In 1988, he was appointed as the University of Maine's Academic Associate to the Atlantic Council of the United States. In 1999-2001, Professor Baktiari was invited to give lectures on Iran in several research centers in Cairo, Egypt. For the year of 1999-2001, Professor Baktiari was a Visiting Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.