Fred H. Lawson is Lynn T. White, Jr. Professor of Government at Mills College. In 2009-10 he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. His publications include Constructing International Relations in the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2006), Why Syria Goes to War (Cornell University Press, 1996), The Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the Muhammad 'Ali Period (Columbia University Press, 1992) and Bahrain: The Modernization of Autocracy (Westview Press, 1989). He edited Demystifying Syria (London: Saqi Books, 2009) and Comparative Regionalism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). From 2009 to 2011, he was president of the Syrian Studies Association, and spent the 1992-93 academic year as Fulbright Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Aleppo.