Julian Waller is a part-time faculty member in the Department of Political Science and teaches Russian Politics. He is also an Associate Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA Corporation), a federally-funded research and development center, in CNA's Russia Studies Program. In addition, he holds affiliations with the Elliott School of International Affairs' Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and Illiberalism Studies Program.

Nathan Brown received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics as well as more general courses on comparative politics and international relations. He received the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship from George Washington University in 2015 and the Harry Harding teaching award from the Elliott School of International Affairs in 2014. His dissertation received the Malcolm Kerr award from the Middle East Studies Association in 1987. In 2013-2015, Dr. Brown was president of the Middle East Studies Association, the academic association for scholars studying the region. In 2013, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow; four years earlier, he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For the 2009–2010 academic year, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His previous research was funded by the United States Institute of Peace and two Fulbright fellowships. In addition to his academic work, Brown serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. He is also non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has previously served as an advisor for the committee drafting the Palestinian constitution, USAID, the United Nations Development Program, and several NGOs. Education.

Mona El-Ghobashy is a scholar of the history and sociology of politics in Egypt and the broader Middle East and North Africa. Her research examines the politics of law and courts, the varieties of protest, and the dynamics of limited elections in contemporary Egypt. Her 2021 book, Bread and Freedom: Egypt's Revolutionary Situation, analyzes the roots, trajectories, and aftermath of the 2011 uprising. It advances an argument about how to study the turbulent politics of revolution beyond standard approaches and polemics. She teaches courses on democratization, revolutions, Middle East political and social history, medieval utopias, and seminars on the craft of research.

Tom Carothers is director of Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. Carothers is a leading authority on comparative democratization and international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world. He is the author or editor of ten critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers, including most recently, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Brookings Press, 2019, co-edited with Andrew O'Donohue). He has been a visiting faculty member at the Central European University, Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS.