In a world troubled by increasing tension between East and West, Fouad Ajami's voice cut through the chaos. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and renowned scholar of Middle Eastern studies, Ajami became a go-to expert on the growing instability in the region.
Ajami, 68, died on June 22 at his home in Maine from prostate cancer.
Born in Lebanon, Ajami came to the United States just before his 18th birthday. He earned his PhD in international relations from the University of Washington and became a U.S. citizen. He taught politics at Princeton before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, where for more than 30 years he ran the Middle East Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies. Ajami joined the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford in 2011.
As a Herbert and Jane Dwight Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, Ajami strove to reverse Islamic radicalism through reforming and strengthening the legitimate role of the state across the entire Muslim world. His research was integral to mapping the political precursors and aftermath of 9/11, the war in Iraq and the U.S. presence in the Arab-Islamic world.
He advised Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush administration and Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. He also met with Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq and was received by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad's Green Zone.
He wrote six books, including The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 and The Syrian Rebellion, as well as some 400 essays on Arab and Islamic politics and U.S. foreign policy for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Ajami's outspoken support for intervention in Middle Eastern politics, especially the U.S. presence in Iraq, attracted attention from all sides of the debate, and some considered his positions controversial. But while not everyone agreed with his bold opinions, Ajami's efforts toward positive change in the Middle East earned him many awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award for public service, the National Humanities Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Speaking about Ajami on CNN, Anderson Cooper said, "He was a man of tremendous grace and kindness, a scholar of the Middle East whose eloquence was without parallel, whose opinions, though sometimes controversial, came from a place of compassion and caring for those whose voices were not being heard." Sam Tadros, Ajami's colleague at the Hoover Institution, recalled the great "kindness, the encouragement [and] the generosity he showed."
Ajami is survived by his wife, Michelle.
Hannah I.T. Brown is a Stanford intern.
