Joshua Landis

Joshua Landis is Sandra Mackey Chair and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma in the Boren College of International Studies. 

He writes and manages SyriaComment.com, a daily newsletter on Syrian politics and publishes frequently in policy journals such as Foreign Affairs, Middle East Policy and Foreign Policy. His book, Syria at Independence: Nationalism, Leadership, and Failure of Republicanism, will be published by the Arab Center for research and Policy studies this coming year. He is a frequent analyst on TV, radio, and in print and is a regular on NPR and the BBC.

He has received three Fulbright grants to support his research in Syria and won numerous prizes for his teaching. He is past President of the Syrian Studies Association.

He has lived 15 years in the Middle East and 4 in Syria. He spent most summers in Syria before the uprising on 2011.

He was educated at Swarthmore (B.A.), Harvard (M.A.), and Princeton (Ph.D).

He is married to Manar Kashour and has two sons, Jonah Firas and Kendall Shaaban. 

Recent Publications

• How to Win the Influence Contest in the Middle East, with co-authors Steven Simon and Aiman Mansour, Foreign Affairs, February 3, 2021.
• The Pointless Cruelty of Trump's New Syria Sanctions, Foreign Affairs, August 17, 2020. 
• Why Syria is the Gordian knot of Obama's anti-ISIL campaign, Al Jazeera America, Sept 15, 2014. Analysis: Syria’s civil war limits the range of credible partners on the ground for a US air campaign
  
• Stay Out of Syria, Foreign Policy, June 5, 2012. Foreign intervention to topple Bashar al-Assad's bloody regime risks a fiasco on par with Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
• Why Asad Is Likely to Survive to 2013, Middle East Policy 19:1 (Spring 2012), pp. 72-85.

Selected Older Publications

“The Syrian Uprising of 2011: Why the Asad Regime is Likely to Survive to 2013,” (February 2012) in Middle East Policy Vol. XIX, No. 1 (2012).   Link

“The US – Syria Relationship: A Few Questions,” Middle East Policy, (17: 3 – Fall 2010) pp. 64-74.  Link

Joshua Landis and Joe Pace, “The Syrian opposition: The Struggle for Unity and Relevance,” in Fred Lawson, ed., Demystifying Syria. Saqi Books, March 2009, pp. 120-143.  Link

“Syria: Secularism, Arabism, and Sunni Orthodoxy,” in Eleanor Doumato and Gregory Starrett, Eds., Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East, London & Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007, pp. 177-196.  Link

“Syria in the 1948 Palestine War: Fighting King Abdullah’s Greater Syria Plan,” in Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., Rewriting the Palestine War: 1948 and the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2^nd Ed. 2007, pp. 176-203. (Also published in French, Italian, Turkish and Arabic) Link

“Early U.S. Policy toward Palestinian Refugees: The Syria Option, 1949-1954,” Ginat & Perkins, eds., The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems, New Solutions, Oklahoma University Press, 2001, pp. 77-87.  Link

“The United States and Reform in Syria,” in The Syria Report, Paris, May 2004, No. 18, pp. 4-7; also published  by al-Tharwa Project and  “All4Syria” in Damascus, July 2004.  Link

“Shishakli and the Druzes: Integration and Intransigence,” in T. Philipp & B. Schäbler, eds., The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation in Bilad al-Sham from the 18th to the 20th Century, Stuttgart, 1998, pp. 369-395.  Link

"Iran turns to Russia for support and strategic alliance, Middle East expert says," NPR Morning Edition, October 20, 2022

"Discussing Syria and the Middle East with Professor Joshua Landis"
The JJ Podcast, September 24, 2022

Landis on al-Jazeera English -- On May 20, 2012, Dr. Landis was on alJazeera English with Bassma Kadmani (spokesperson for the Syrian National Council), and Kamal Labwani (opposition leader who broke away from the SNC) to discuss the opposition in Syria.