Hussein Banai

Hussein "Huss" Banai is an Associate Professor of International Studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is also faculty affiliate in the departments of Political Science, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Central Eurasian Studies. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT.

Banai's research interests lie at the intersection of political thought and international relations, with a special focus on topics in democratic theory, non-Western liberal thought, diplomatic history and theory, US-Iran relations, and Iran’s political development. He has published on these topics in academic, policy, and popular periodicals. He is the author of Hidden Liberalism: Burdened Visions of Progress in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2020); co-author of two volumes on US-Iran relations: Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) and Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979–1988 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); and co-editor of Human Rights at the Intersections: Transformation through Local, Global, and Cosmopolitan Challenges (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023). 

Banai is Lead Book Editor of Review of International Studies, the flagship review journal of the International Studies Association. From 2018 to 2020, he served as an Associate Editor (for Social Sciences) of Iranian Studies, the journal of the Association for Iranian Studies. In addition to his scholarly work, he frequently comments on Iran-related issues in the media. His interviews and comments on current events have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Voice of America, Time, NPR, NBC News Online, CNN Online, BBC News, BBC Persian Service, The National Interest, Persia Digest, U.S. News & World Report, Inside Higher Ed, and The Huffington Post.