Alisa Rubin Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Alisa Rubin  

Nonresident senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy under the Foreign Policy program at Brookings

Alisa Rubin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy under the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Her research focuses on international political economy (with a focus on the Middle East), business-government relations, global higher education, and cross-cultural relations.

She is an external faculty affiliate at the Public Diplomacy Collaborative at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a senior lecturer in government at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. Alisa also serves as the founding academic director of the Argov Fellows Program in Leadership and Diplomacy, IDC's honors program for leadership development. She previously worked as an equity investment analyst both in the US and in the Middle East. She was also a visiting scholar at Harvard University and an adjunct professor at Brandeis University.

Alisa completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in history and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University as well as a M.A. in international economics and finance at Brandeis University. Her book The American Ivory Tower Overseas: Localization and the Rise of US Higher Education in the Arab World is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. The study examines the rise of American (and other western) higher education in the Arab world from the establishment of the American University of Beirut in 1866 to the recent proliferation of US higher education initiatives in the Persian Gulf states. Alisa’s first book, Debating Islam in the Jewish State (State University of New York Press, 2001), examines the development of Israeli policy towards the religious institutions of the state's Muslim citizens. Alisa has also published articles on a wide range of issues concerning contemporary Middle Eastern affairs.

Related Speakers View all


More like Alisa