Guests: War on Terror, War on Muslims?

David Anderson
David Anderson is an independent reviewer of the United Kingdom’s anti-terrorism legislation, where he is tasked with submitting recommendations to ministers in Parliament and informing the public about how anti-terrorism laws operates. From 2004-2014, Anderson was a part-time criminal judge in the Crown Court. He previously worked as a lawyer in Washington, DC and in the private office of an EU commissioner in Brussels. Anderson is also general editor of the Oxford EU Law Series and member of the editorial board of the European Human Rights Law Review.
Follow him on Twitter: @terrorwatchdog 

Cerie Bullivant
Cerie Bullivant is a British-born filmmaker and journalist living in London. He also serves as a spokesman for Cage, an independent advocacy organisation working to empower communities impact by Britain’s fight against terrorism. In 2006, Bullivant was detained by British authorities as a terrorist suspect and spent the next two years living under a control order before being completely exonerated. He was awarded the Liberty Human Rights Young Person of the Year Award in 2011.
Follow him on Twitter: @CerieOfficial

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke is the director general of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an independent think-tank on defence and security research. Clarke, who formerly served as the founding director of the International Policy Institute at King’s College London, was appointed to the Prime Minister’s National Security Forum in 2009, and in 2010 to the Chief of Defence Staff’s new Strategic Advisory Group. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel on Defence for UK Trade and Industry. His recent publications include: The Afghan Papers: Committing Britain to War in Helmand 2005-06, London, RUSI/Routledge 2011; United Kingdom: Strategic Posture Review, World Politics Review, November 2011; ‘Does War Have a Future?, in Lindley-French and Boyar eds.,The Oxford Handbook of War, Oxford, OUP, 2012.
Follow him on Twitter: @MClarkeRUSI

Hamid Dabashi
Born and raised in Iran, Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Dabashi, who is also the author of over 25 books, is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Dabashi is also the founder of ‘Dreams of a Nation’, a Palestinian Film Project dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society.
Follow him on Twitter: @HamidDabashi

Christopher Dickey
Chris Dickey currently serves as the Foreign Editor for The Daily Beast. As the author of six books and a longtime Middle East correspondent, Dickey has been covering counter-terrorism efforts and terrorist groups since before 9/11. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Central American Bureau Chief. He is also a former Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow. 
Follow him on Twitter: @csdickey

Negin Farsad
Born in Southern California, Negin Farsad is an American of Iranian descent. After obtaining two master’s degrees from Columbia University and working more than a year as a policy advisor for NYC Campaign Finance Board, she decided to leave her job and pursue a career in entertainment. In addition to starring in and directing “The Muslims are Coming!”, Farsad directed and performed in the Comedy Central series, The Watch List – the first show in the “history of television to feature Middle Eastern American comics tackling international political issues”, and wrote and performed a solo show entitled Bootleg Islam, among many more.

Philip Golub
Raised in Europe and the United States, Philip Golub is a professor of international relations at The American University of Paris (AUP) where he has taught since 2006. Prior to teaching at AUP, he taught at the Institut d’études politiques of Paris (Sciences-Po) and at Université Paris 8. Golub is a founder and editor of The Asia Times, and a long time contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique. He has also lectured and published widely in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Anne-Marie Le Gloannec
Anne-Marie Le Gloannec is a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI) in Paris. Le Gloannec, who is also a political scientist professor, specialises in European foreign policy, Turkey-EU relations, and European security and transatlantic debates. She was also a fellow at the D.C. based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars until 2004 and held various teaching positions at Johns Hopkins University (Bologna Center), the University of Paris I, Sciences Po, Sciences Po Lille, the Free University of Berlin, and the Viadrina University (Frankfurt an der Oder). 
Follow her on Twitter: @AMLeGloannec

Alain Gresh
Alain Gresh, who was born in Cairo and later moved to Paris, is a journalist and specialist on the Middle East. Gresh, who has authored several books, is currently the editor of Le Monde diplomatique. He is also a member of the administrative council of the Institute of Arab World (IMA) and president of the Association of French journalists specialised on the Maghreb and the Middle East (AJMO).

Dilip Hiro
Born in India, Dilip Hiro is a writer, historian, journalist and commentator. An expert on Middle Eastern, Central and South Asian, and Islamic affairs, Hiro has authored 34 books, including After Empire, which dissects the waning of US power around the world, as well as the classic history of the Iran-Iraq war, The Longest War, the national bestseller, Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm, and the acclaimed history of oil and politics, Blood of the Earth. Hiro’s latest book is A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East.

Arun Kundnani
Arun Kundnani is a British writer and human rights activist. Kundnani has written extensively on issues concerning race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His most recent book, The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror, is a critique of the counterterrorism policy and explores how the the new front in the war on terror is the “homegrown enemy”. Kundnani is also a former editor of the journal Race & Class, and now teaches at New York University.
Follow him on Twitter: @ArunKundnani

Alan Mendoza
Alan Mendoza is the executive director at The Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank he founded which works to “combat extremism, and advance democracy and real human rights” where he directs analysis, research focus, and strategy development for the organisation. Mendoza, who is an expert on transatlantic relationships, also serves as the Chief Advisor to the British Parliament on International and Homeland Security.
Follow him on Twitter: @alanmendoza

Dean Obeidallah
Former lawyer of Palestinian-Italian descent, Dean Obeidallah is a political commentator and comedian. He co-directed / co-produced the award winning documentary The Muslims are Coming!, a film that follows Muslim-Americans who use comedy to challenge and dispel negative stereotypes about Muslims and Islam across America. Obeidallah has appeared on Comedy Central’s Axis of Evil special, and is the co-founder of the New York Arab American Comedy Festival. He is also the co-creator of “Stand up for Peace”, a comedy tour he performs with Jewish American comedian Scott Blakeman to foster Jewish / Muslim understanding through comedy.

Faiza Patel
Born and raised in Pakistan, Faiza Patel attended New York University School of Law and now currently serves as co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, a policy institute which seeks to ensure that national security policies respect human rights norms and do so without religious or ethnic profiling. As the author of three reports, Patel has testified before Congress opposing the surveillance of Muslims. Prior to this work, Patel worked with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as a senior policy officer.
Follow her on Twitter @FaizaPatelBCJ

Edwy Plenel
Edwy Plenel is a French political journalist. Plenel began his journalism career in the 1970s, and became the editor-in-chief of the French newspaper Le Monde from 2000 to 2004. In 2008 he founded mediapart, an Internet-based subscription journal specializing on investigations on France’s political and financial elite. He is the author of Dire Non (“To say No”), Le droit de savoir (“The Right to Know”) and, most recently, Pour les musulmans “For the Muslims”), in which he warns of France’s growing Islamophobia and a critique of its foreign policy.
Follow him on Twitter: @edwyplenel

Dana Priest
Dana Priest is an American academic, investigative journalist, and writer. Priest, who has written extensively on issues concerning the US’ ‘War on Terror’ and on the CIA’s covert counterterrorism campaign, is currently the National Security reporter for the Washington Post. In 2006 Priest won a Pulitzer Prize (one of two) for her reporting on “black sites,” a network of secret prisons maintained by the CIA. Her 2003 book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, won the New York Public Library Bernstein Book Award.
Follow her on Twitter: @danapriest

Linda Sarsour
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian Muslim American and an outspoken community activist working to end racial and religious profiling. Sarsour, who is also a mother of three, currently serves as the advocacy and civic engagement coordinator for the National Network for Arab American Communities. She is also the director of the Arab American Association of New York where she represents the Arab community in NYC. Sarsour, who is the graduate of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, is also a board member of the New York Immigration Coalition, a group of over 250 nonprofit agencies that serves the diverse immigrant communities of New York. 
Follow her on Twitter: @lsarsour

Mitch Silber
Born in New York, Mitchell D. Silber is the executive managing director of K2 Intelligence where he is responsible for building and managing the Data Analytics practice. Prior to this role, Silber was the director of intelligence analysis for the New York City Police Department (NYPD) where he supervised the intelligence Division’s entire portfolio of ongoing terrorism-related investigations. He also built and managed both the Analytic and Cyber Intelligence Units. Silber is also the co-author of the 2007 NYPD report – Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.
Follow him on Twitter: @MitchSilber

Slavoj Zizek
Slovenian-born Marxist philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He has been called the “Elvis Presley of philosophy” and, according to British literary theorist Terry Eagleton, “formidably brilliant”. Zizek has authored dozens of books, including The Sublime Object of Ideology, Living in the End Times (Verso Books) and, most recently, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (Verso Books). He is also the writer and star of the film The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.
Follow him on Twitter: @Szizekian