Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently is a professor of International Relations and holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University, School of International Service in Washington, D.C. Akbar Ahmed served as the Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He currently is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Immediately prior, he taught at Princeton University as served as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also taught at Harvard University and was a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology. Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam. He completed his MA at Cambridge University and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.Ahmed received the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (Medal of Excellence) and Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence) from the Pakistani government for academic distinction and the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs in London. He was also awarded the inaugural Purpose Prize in 2006 alongside Judea Pearl and is frequently named in the annual book, The Muslim 500: The World's 500 Most Influential Muslims, and was named a 2015 Global Thought Leader by The World Post and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.