Dr. Howard Eissenstat

Howard Eissenstat is an Laurentian Associate Professor of Middle East history and History Department Chair at St. Lawrence University and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington.  He received his PhD in Modern Middle East History from UCLA in 2007 and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University in 2008-2009.  Eissenstat's research focuses on the intersection of nationalism, religious identity, and policy in the Turkish Republic.  His recent work has focused increasingly on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, especially on issues of rule-of-law, minority rights, and the reshaping of political culture under the AKP. 

Dr. Eissenstat served as a Turkey Country Specialist for Amnesty International-USA from 2006 – 2017 and was a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy from 2017 - 2020.  Eissenstat has lectured for the U.S. Military, and the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, and the Canadian Foreign Service Institute.  He has given testimony to the Canadian Senate and U.S. Congress. 

Eissenstat’s op-eds have appeared in USA Today, Reuters, World Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, and the Washington Post.  He has been quoted in articles for Reuters, the AP, the Washington Post and New York Times, among others. He has appeared on NPR, Voice of America, the BBC, CNN, and the CBC.