Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul Istrabadi

Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul Istrabadi

Director, Center for the Study of the Middle East

The Michael A. and Laurie Burns McRobbie Bicentennial Professor in Global Strategic Studies, Central Eurasian Studies Department

  • fistraba@indiana.edu
Campus
IU Bloomington

Full Biography

Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University—Bloomington, where he is the Michael A. and Laurie Burns McRobbie Professor in Global Strategic Studies and Professor in the Central Eurasian Studies Department at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. From 2004 to 2010 he represented Iraq at the United Nations, having previously acted as legal advisor to the Iraqi Foreign Minister during the negotiations for U.N. Security Council resolution 1546 recognizing Iraq’s re-assertion of its sovereignty. In 2003-04, he was principal legal drafter of Iraq's interim constitution, the Transitional Administrative Law, and was advisor on constitutional and legal affairs to Dr. Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council Presidency.

Al-Istrabadi’s book, The Future of ISIS: Regional and International Implications, edited with Sumit Ganguly, was published in 2018 by Brookings. His monograph, The Iraqi Supreme Criminal Tribunal: National and International Dimensions, assessing the trials of prominent members of Iraq’s previous regime, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. Amb. al-Istrabadi is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Education

B.A. in Chemistry at Indiana University, 1986
J.D. at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 1988
LL.M. at Northwestern University, 2005
S.J.D. at Northwestern University, 2009

Amb. Istrabadi in the News

Publications

Islam and the State in Iraq: The Post-2003 Constitutions, in: Rainer Grote and Tilmann Röder (eds.), Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity (Oxford University Press, October 2011)

A Constitution without Constitutionalism: Reflections on Iraq’s Failed Constitutional Processes, 87 Texas L. Review. 1627 (2009)


Rebuilding a Nation. Myths, Realities, and Solutions in Iraq, in: Harvard International Review (July 8, 2007)