Dr. Qamar-ul Huda is the Michael E. Paul Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the United States Naval Academy. Previously, he served as an associate adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Government. Dr. Huda co-founded and was the Vice President of the Center for Global Policy (CGP), a nonpartisan think-tank that focuses on U.S. security and foreign policies in the Middle East, South Aisa, Central Asia and East Asia region. Dr. Huda was a Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Department of State Secretary’s Office for Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA) where he focused on civil society, religious communities, and diplomacy with non-government organizations. His areas of focus were civil society organizations, education, multilateral affairs, and mitigating violent extremism. The U.S. State Department recruited Dr. Huda to be a seconded diplomat as the first Director of the Department of Dialogue and Collaboration to Hedayah: The International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. For ten years he worked at the U.S.Institute of Peace, a Congressional-funded institute to reduce and prevent global conflict, Department of Religion & Peacemaking as a senior expert, researcher, and resident scholar of religion and global politics focused on conflict resolution, peacebuilding research, religious peacebuilding, and field training to civil society members. He supervised and managed the development of the field of conflict resolution and mediation studies in public schools in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and various parts of the Middle East. Dr. Huda served as a director of the countering violent extremism project at USIP, where he designed, developed and implemented numerous online training courses for USIP’s Academy of Conflict Analysis and Conflict Transformation.
At USNA Dr. Huda teaches courses on Afghanistan, U.S. Diplomacy, and Conflict Studies and Conflict Resolution, foreign policy and international relations. He has taught at UCLA, Boston College, Brandeis University, and the College of Holy Cross; examples of his courses are Ethics in International Affairs, U.S. Foreign Policy and Counter-Terrorism, Ethics of War and Peacemaking, The Politics of International Aid, Religion & Global Diplomacy, The Global Politics of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), Research and Methods in Conflict Analysis, Geopolitics in South Asia and Modern Iran: Politics, Economics, & Religion. Dr. Huda has published three books, six training manuals on conflict and mediation, and religious peacebuilding, and has fifty-five peer-reviewed articles on peacebuilding, conflict resolution, comparative ethics, law, and educational reform. He received research grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), The American Academy of Religion (AAR), UCLA’s International Security Studies program, and was twice a Fulbright scholar. He earned his doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in political history, and his Master of Arts in political economy and history of Asia & the Middle East. He earned his Bachelor of Arts (honors) from Colgate University in International Relations & Philosophy and Religion.
