Board of Advisors

Leila Ahmed is the Victor S. Thomas chair at the Harvard Divinity School. Prior to her appointment at HDS, she was professor of women's studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. While at the University of Massachusetts, she was director of the women's studies program from 1992 to 1995 and director of the Near Eastern studies program from 1991 to 1992. Her latest book,  A Border Passage, has been widely acclaimed. Her other publications include the books  Women and Gender in Islam: The Historical Roots of a Modern Debate and  Edward William Lane: A Study of His Life and Work and of British Ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century, as well as many articles, among them "Arab Culture and Writing Women's Bodies" and "Between Two Worlds: The Formation of a Turn of the Century Egyptian Feminist." Her current research and writing centers on Islam in America and issues of women and gender.

Fred Kaplan is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of several biographies, including The Singular Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, Henry James, The Imagination of Genius, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, Lincoln:  The Biography of a Writer, has been equally critically acclaimed. He lives in Boothbay, Maine.