Ambassador Akbar S. Ahmed is an anthropologist, Islamic scholar, poet, playwright, and filmmaker described as the worlds leading authority on contemporary Islam by the BBC. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, DC and previously taught at Cambridge, Princeton, and Harvard universities. He was formerly the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland and served for three decades in the
Civil Service of Pakistan where his posts included Commissioner in Baluchistan and Political Agent in the Tribal Areas, including Waziristan. He conceived and completed the Jinnah Quartet which included the feature film Jinnah, a documentary, an academic book, and a graphic novel on the Quaid. After completing a
quartet of books for the Brookings Institution Press on the relationship between the West and the Muslim world, two accompanied by films, he is working on The Mingling of the Oceans: How Civilizations Can Live Together.