A continuation of more than two decades of programming, the 2022 Middle East Update will be presented at 3:30 p.m. Monday, June 27, 2022, in the Hall of Philosophy. The conversation between Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Geoffrey Kemp will focus on, among other issues, Russia’s role in the Middle East, and what the war in Ukraine has meant, and will mean, for politics in the Middle East and Russia’s Middle East presence.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He holds non-residential fellowships with Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he is editor of Orbis, FPRI’s journal of world affairs and is a senior fellow in FPRI’s Eurasia Program, and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where he is co-host of the “Doorstep” podcast. He is a member of Loisach Group, a collaboration between the Munich Security Conference and the Marshall Center to enhance U.S. and Germany’s security partnership, and a contributing editor for The National Interest. An adjunct senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest, he is also a senior fellow at The Nixon Center.

Gvosdev has taught at Baylor, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard Extension and Brown universities. From 2016 to 2020, he held the Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in economic geography and national security at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of six books, and most recently the co-author of The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Political Islam. He is the co-author of US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower, and the co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests. Gvosdev received his doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship.

Geoffrey Kemp, Senior Director of Regional Security Programs at the Center for the National Interest, has hosted the Middle East Update at Chautauqua Institution since 1993. He served in the White House during the first Reagan administration as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff. Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he was Director of the Middle East Arms Control Project.

He is the author or co-author of many books and monographs on regional security, including War With Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences; Iran and Iraq: The Shia Connection, Soft Power, and the Nuclear Factor; U.S. and Iran, The Nuclear Dilemma: Next Steps; Iran’s Bomb: American and Iranian Perspectives; America and Iran: Road Maps and Realism; Energy Superbowl: Strategic Politics and the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin; Point of No Return: The Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace; and Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East.