Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of international politics and founding director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is also at senior fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, and an affiliated researcher in the Critical Security Studies working group in the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. Makdisi is an elected member of the Board of Directors at The Academic Council on the United Nations System. He is the co-editor of Land of the Blue Helmets: The United Nations in the Arab World (University of California Press) and Interventions in Conflict: International Peacemaking in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan). His current book project, Disarming Syria: The International Politics of Eliminating Syria’s Chemical Weapons (with C. Pison-Hindawi) is under contract with Routledge Press.