Cole Bunzel

Cole Bunzel is an Assistant Professor at the Clements Center for National Security at The University of Texas at Austin, as well as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A historian of the contemporary Middle East, he specializes in the history of Saudi Arabia, Islamic theology and law, and modern Islamic radicalism. He is the author of Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement (Princeton University Press, 2023) and has written widely on Middle Eastern politics and Islamism, including for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. His research spans the religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya and his followers in the fourteenth century to present-day Salafism/Wahhabism and the political dynamics of the Arab Gulf states.

Education: Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, 2018
M.A. in International Relations, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2012
A.B. in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University 2008