Nathan J. Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, is a distinguished scholar and author of nine books on Arab politics and governance, as well as editor of five books. Brown brings his special expertise on Islam and politics, Egypt, Palestine, and Arab law and constitutionalism to Carnegie. Brown’s latest books were published by Oxford University Press  in 2016 and Cornell University Press in early 2012. His current work focuses on religion, law, and politics in the Arab world. For the 2023-24 academic year, Brown is a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study in Germany.

In 2023-2024, Brown was a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study in Germany.  In 2013, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow; four years earlier, he was named a Carnegie scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Earlier he served as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Fulbright scholar in Egypt, Israel, Qatar, and Kuwait. In addition to his academic work, Brown serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. He has previously served as an advisor for the committee drafting the Palestinian constitution, USAID, the United Nations Development Program, and several NGOs. For 2013-2015 he was president of the Middle East Studies Association, the academic association for scholars studying the region.

Brown is the author of Autocrats Don't Always Get What They Want (University of Michigan Press, 2024) with Steven D. Schaaf, Julian Waller, and Samer Anabtawi, Lumbering State, Restless Society: Egypt in the Modern Era (Columbia University Press 2021) with Shimaa Hatab and Amr Adly, Arguing Islam After the Revival of Arab Politics (Oxford University Press, 2016); When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Cornell University Press, 2012); Between Religion and Politics (with Amr Hamzawy, Carnegie 2010); Resuming Arab Palestine (University of California Press, 2003); Constitutions in a Non-Constitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and Prospects for Accountable Government (SUNY Press, 2001); The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Arab States of the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt (Yale University Press, 1990).