Daniel Pipes

Academic, writer, and political commentator

Daniel Pipes is an American academic, writer, and political commentator who focuses on criticism of Islam and Islamism. He went up to Harvard University in 1967 initially to study mathematics, before switching to history. Extensive travels around the Middle East in his undergraduate years culminated in a PhD in medieval Islamic history, received in 1978.

In 1990, Pipes founded the Middle East Forum, a public policy institute that seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East. In 2008, he was made a Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. As well as having lectured at institutions including the University of Chicago and Harvard, Pipes has authored twelve books and written widely across the global media on issues concerned with the Middle East.