BEIRUT—The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace announced today the appointment of Lina Khatib as the new director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
Khatib will succeed Paul Salem, who oversaw the Carnegie Middle East Center’s launch in 2006 and its rapid expansion over the past eight years. She will play a pivotal part in managing and guiding the center’s expanded role as one of the primary research and capacity-building institutions in the Arab region. Khatib’s research will focus on democratic transition and political participation across the region.
Announcing her appointment, Carnegie Vice President for Studies Marwan Muasher, who oversees the Carnegie Middle East Program in Beirut and Washington, said Khatib’s portfolio of interdisciplinary scholarship, strong management experience, and keen regional insight will be invaluable assets.
“I am confident that under Lina’s leadership, the Carnegie Middle East Center will continue to expand the top quality research and policy analysis that has made it one of the region’s premier think tanks,” he said. “She is an outstanding addition to our Beirut team, and we are very pleased to welcome her to the Carnegie family.”
Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, “The Carnegie Middle East Center has grown, under Paul Salem’s leadership, to be a recognized source of informed policy research and analysis in the region. I am thrilled Lina Khatib will usher the center into its next chapter, working to strengthen our networks throughout the Arab world and provide fresh policy ideas for the complex economic and security issues that affect it.”
Khatib comes to the Carnegie Middle East Center from Stanford University, where she had served since 2010 as the co-founding head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Her areas of expertise include public diplomacy, U.S. relations with the Arab world, Islamism, and gender and youth issues. Khatib has published seven books on the Middle East, including the upcoming Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), co-edited with Ellen Lust, and Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle, (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
“I am delighted to join the region’s top-ranking think tank and to work with the Carnegie Endowment at such an exciting time in the history of the Middle East,” Khatib said. “Carnegie’s global outlook presents unique opportunities for dynamic policy engagement, and I look forward to leading Carnegie’s Middle East Center.”
Press Contact: Clara Hogan | +1 202 939 2233 | chogan@ceip.org
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a unique global network of policy research centers in Russia, China, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. Our mission, dating back more than a century, is to advance the cause of peace through analysis and development of fresh policy ideas and direct engagement and collaboration with decisionmakers in government, business, and civil society. Working together, our centers bring the inestimable benefit of multiple national viewpoints to bilateral, regional, and global issues.