A professor of international affairs and the head of the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He joined the institute in 2014 and served as department head until 2022.He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1987 and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo and Middlebury College.His research focuses on international politics in the Middle East, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. He has authored three books, the most recent being The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (2010). His articles have been published in prestigious journals such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Middle East Journal, Security Studies, The Washington Quarterly, and The National Interest. 

Before joining Texas A&M University, he taught at the University of Vermont and Columbia University. He was a fellow in Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He also served as a visiting professor of international affairs and a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia.