Leon Hadar is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Middle East Program. A Washington-based journalist, political scientist, and global affairs analyst, Hadar is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Quagmire: America in the Middle East (Cato Institute, 1992). 

A former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, Hadar’s commentaries have been published in major global affairs magazines, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, and Mediterranean Quarterly, as well as in leading American and international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer, El Pais, and The Straits Times.

Hadar has served as Washington correspondent for The Business Times and as the New York and United Nations bureau chief of The Jerusalem Post and The London Jewish Chronicle. He is a contributing editor with The National Interest and The American Conservative, has contributed regularly to The Spectator, and is a columnist and blogger for Haaretz (Israel).

Dr. Hadar holds three Master’s degrees, one in political science and communication from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and two from the School of International and Public Affairs and the School of Journalism (where he was the recipient of the Henry N. Taylor Award) at Columbia University where he also received a certificate from the Middle East Institute. He received his Ph.D. in international relations from the American University, Washington DC. 

Hadar taught international relations, Middle East politics, and communication at the American University and the University of Maryland, College Park, and was the director of international studies at Mount Vernon College in Washington.