Fouad Ajami became well known after he penned The Arab Predicament, in which he probed the discontent that spread with the failure of the nationalist project following Arab independence and the defeat of the Arabs by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.
His book was a harsh indictment of the post-colonial Arab condition. He is a former research fellow at The Lehrman Institute; a contributing editor for US News & World Report and member of the editorial board of foreign affairs; a consultant to CBS News; author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (1998); Beirut: City of Regrets (1988); The Vanished Imam: Musa Al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (1986); and a frequent contributor on Middle Eastern issues and contemporary international history to The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic as well as other journals and periodicals.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, Ajami also sits on the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank.