Safwan Masri

Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs; Adjunct Senior Research Scholar

Email: smm1@columbia.edu

Education; Contemporary geopolitics; Society; Education; geopolitics'; Society in the Arab World;

Professor Safwan M. Masri is Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University. Masri holds a senior research scholar appointment at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He joined the faculty of Columbia Business School in 1988 and was appointed Vice Dean in 1993, a position he held for thirteen years. He previously taught engineering at Stanford University, and was a visiting professor at INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) in France.

A scholar on education and contemporary geopolitics and society in the Arab world, Masri’s work focuses on understanding the historic, postcolonial dynamics among religion, education, society, and politics. He is the author of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly (Columbia University Press, 2017), which examines why Tunisia was the only country to emerge from the Arab Spring as a democracy. Masri’s writings on education and current affairs have been featured in the Financial Times, Huffington Post, and Times Higher Education.