LOUIS J. CANTORI

Dr. Cantori is Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He did his graduate work in Political Science and on the Middle East at the University of Chicago. He studied Islamic philosophy in the Faculty of Theology, al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. He was a Fulbright student in Egypt in 1963-65 and subsequently was visiting professor at the American University in Cairo in 1974-76. In 1969-70 he did fieldwork in Morocco and returned as a Fulbright researcher in 1994-95. Altogether, he has lived about seven years in the Middle East and has done research, visited or done consulting activities in Egypt, Morocco, Israel, the Occupied Territories, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and Iraq ( where he was present up to five days before the invasion of Kuwait).

As a specialist on development, he has been a consultant for US A.I.D. and numerous private companies in the area of water and waste water, roads, government organization etc. He is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer on the Middle East at the State Department and has briefed Generals Schwartzkopf and Hoare (Cent Com) as well as speaking to Special Operations at Hurlburt Field, 5^th Special Forces and the JFK Special Warfare School. He has been Visiting Professor, U.S.M.A., West Point and Olin Distinguished Professor of National Security Studies, U.S. Air Force Academy. He has also been the Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory, U.S. Marine Corps University. He has a scholarly interest in professional military education.

He is the author, co-author or editor of four books on the Middle East and on Comparative Politics (e.g. Local Politics and Development in the Middle East) and over forty articles on the Middle East and other subjects e.g. "Islam and Development" World and I ( September 1997) and a review article "Civil Society, Liberalism, and the Corporatist Alternative in the Middle East, "Middle East Studies Association Bulletin" (July 1997).

On Middle East matters he is presently preparing for publication, Statism and the Emergence of the Modern Arab State. He is also a founder of The Circle of Tradition and Progress (London and Washington) which is a group of prominent Western and Muslim intellectuals who share a critical view of modernity. He is also a founding member of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and will be Provost, The School of Islamic and Social Sciences (Leesburg, VA), Fall 2000. He is also a founding member of the Conference Group on the Middle East, an affiliated group of the American Political Science Association.