Juan Cole

Juan Ricardo Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Cole was born on 23 October 1952 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

His blog 'Informed Comment' is one of the leading "go to" sites for expert commentary and analysis on middle east issues. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent work is The New Arabs: How the Wired and Global Youth of the Middle East Is Transforming It (Simon & Schuster, June, 2014).Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009, rev. 2010) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others.

He has given many radio and press interviews. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs.

He has a regular column at Truthdig.

He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there. A bibliography of his writings may be found here.

Juan Cole’s University of Michigan Home page is here.

His books are available via Barnes and Noble

and at his author page at Amazon.com.

For a short biography of Juan Cole click here.

You can follow Juan Cole on Twitter @jricole.