Barry Rubin

Barry M. Rubin is Editor of MERIA and Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. He is also Research Director of the IDC’s Lauder School, the editor of the journal Turkish Studies, and has been serving as Deputy Director of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

In addition, he is a senior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center's International Center for Counterterrorist Policy. Prof. Rubin also writes The Jerusalem Post's Middle East column.

Education & Career

In the first half of the 1980s Rubin was a fellow, and latterly a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies expert. Rubin had studied his PhD at Georgetown - which he completed in 1978. His thesis, which was published in 1979, was called, 'American perceptions of great power politics in the Middle East, 1941-1947'. The earliest press reference to Rubin being at the Center for Strategic and International Studies was in the Wall Street Journal in November 1979. During this time Rubin was considered and expert on the Middle East and especially on Iran, and frequently commenting on the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the Shah - the US based dictator.

In May 1981 Richard Kessler, a Research Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote to the New York Times to complain its critical review of Michael Ledeen's and William Lewis's Debacle: The American Failure in Iran, which Kessler claimed contained, 'several unfair and unwarranted attacks'. Kessler retorted that CSIS was non-partisan and 'represent[ed] diverse viewpoints'. He cited Rubin's study Paved with Good Intentions as evidence. The book, which explored American relations with Iran since the 19th century, received broadly positive reviews in the US press, and argued that American policy on Iran was well intention but failed to properly understand Iranian history and culture; and especially, as the New York Times paraphrased Rubin, its 'tradition of xenophobia and distrust of foreigners'.

In 1984 and 1985, whilst still at Georgetown, Rubin also worked as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow in the office of the Democratic Senator Gary Hart. In May 1985 it was reported in the National Journal that Rubin was leaving Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies to advise Gary Hart on foreign policy. At the same time Rubin was a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

In 1989 John Hopkins's Foreign Policy Institute published The Politics of Terrorism, Terror as a State and a Revolutionary Strategy. According to a review in the Washington Times, the book was 'is the first of a series of books from the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, which will examine the entire phenomenon.' The review said that the 'key chapter' was Rubin's 'Political Uses of Terrorism in the Middle East'.

Views

In the 1980s Rubin criticised Reagan's relationship with the Christian right. He was one of a number of figures at a seminar in Washington in 1984, held as part of the five-day international convention of B'nai B'rith. According to the Washington Post participants were 'almost universally critical of President Reagan's linking of religion and politics in a speech at the Republican National Convention'. Rubin said Reagan's statement on relgion and politics was 'almost word for word the kind of statements that the Ayatollah Khomeini has made'.

Following Israel's bombing of Tunisia in 1985, the Christian Science Monitor quoted Rubin as saying, 'Here's a clear case where international law has to catch up to new kinds of problems. If the US says it's against international law to retaliate against terrorist acts, the effect would be to foreclose the possibility for retaliation under any circumstances.'

Affiliations

• Social Democrats USA - National Advisory Council
• Euston Manifesto - American statement signatory
• Democratiya - Contributor
• Foreign Policy Research Institute -scholar

Resources

• Neocon Europe Barry Rubin