Akbar Ahmed is currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington, D.C., the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has taught at Princeton, Harvard, and Cambridge Universities and has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC. He is a frequent media contributor, the author of several books (including Journey into Islam and Polity Press's Islam under Siege), a playwright ("Noor" and "The Trial of Dara Shikoh"), and a published poet.