Fouad Ajami is the Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East studies at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has written many books on the subject, including The Arab Predicament, The Vanished Imam, Beirut: the City of Regrets, The Dream Palace of the Arabs: a Generation’s Odyssey, and The Foreigner’s Gift: the Americans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq. Among his awards is the National Humanities Medal, which he won in 2006.