Marvin G. Weinbaum

Marvin G. Weinbaum is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and served as analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003. He is currently a scholar-in-residence and Director of the Pakistan Center at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

Professor Weinbaum has his doctorate from Columbia University in 1965, his MA from the University of Michigan in 1958, and his BA from Brooklyn College in 1957. In 1965 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Illinois, Dr. Weinbaum served for fifteen years as the director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He was awarded Fulbright Research Fellowships for Egypt in 1981–82 and Afghanistan in 1989–90, and was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in 1996–97. Additionally, Dr. Weinbaum has been the recipient of research awards from the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, IREX, the American Political Science Association, and other granting agencies.

After retiring at Illinois, Professor Weinbaum has held adjunct professorships at Georgetown and George Washington universities, and has frequently lectured at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. At the State Department he was a recipient of its Superior Honors Award. Since leaving the Department, he has assumed numerous consultancies, both with government agencies and the private sector.

Dr. Weinbaum's research, teaching, and consultancies have focused on the issues of national security, state building, democratization, and political economy. He is the author or editor of six books, including South Asia Approaches the Millennium: Reexamining National Security, co-edited with Chetan Kumar in 1995, and Afghanistan and Pakistan: Resistance and Reconstruction in 1994. Dr. Weinbaum has also written more than 100 book chapters and professional journal articles, mostly about Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, but also on Egypt and Turkey. He is author of numerous opinion pieces in leading American newspapers and magazines, and many think-tank reports. Among his very recent publications are book chapters in edited volumes dealing with the U.S.-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s political future, and state building and the security challenges in Afghanistan. His most recent journal article is on ties between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and appears in the Middle East Journal.