Bernard Haykel is a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a professor of Near Eastern Studies and the director of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University. He received his doctorate in 1998 in Oriental studies with an emphasis on Islam and history. Much of Haykel’s teaching and writing lies at the juncture of the intellectual, political, and social history of the Middle East with particular emphasis on the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. He has written extensively on Saudi and Yemeni culture and politics, Wahhabism, Salafism, and aspects of the Islamic doctrine and law.