Robert R. Bianchi is an international lawyer and a consultant to numerous government agencies and international organizations. He earned his Ph.D. and J.D. at the University of Chicago and has taught political science at the American University in Cairo, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago. He is the author of Interest Groups and Political Development in Turkey (1984) and Unruly Corporatism: Associational Life in Twentieth-Century Egypt (1989). He made the hajj in 1989.