All of the Arab Center’s activities are overseen by a Board of Directors composed of distinguished academics, selected for their combined experience and academic expertise. In each session, the Board of Directors discusses the general plan for the Center, its annual budget and the reports produced across departments. The board identifies weaknesses and plans to overcome them, along with steps that should be taken to enhance the continuous development and effectiveness of the Center, in line with its mission.
General Director and Member of the Board of Directors of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. Dr. Bishara is a researcher and writer with numerous books and publications on political thought, social theory and philosophy, as well as some literary works. He taught philosophy and cultural studies at Birzeit University from 1986 to 1996, and was involved in the establishment of research centers in Palestine including the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy (Muwatin) and the Mada al-Carmel Center for Applied Social Research. In 2007 he was forced to go into exile after being prosecuted by Israel. In 2002 he won the Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought, and in 2003 the Global Exchange Human Rights Award. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1986 at Humboldt University in Berlin, having previously completed his master’s degree there in 1984.
Dr Bishara has published hundreds of papers and studies in academic journals in various languages. His best-known publications include: On the Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto; Civil Society: A Critical Study; Religion and Secularity in Historical Context (two parts in three volumes); On Revolution and Revolutionary Potential; Is There a Coptic Issue in Egypt?; To be an Arab in our Times;The Army and Politics: Theoretical Problems and Arab Models; Essay on Freedom; Sect, Sectarianism and Imagined Sects; What is Salafism?; and The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh): A General Framework and Critical Contribution to Understanding the Phenomenon. Some of these books have become seminal works in their field.
He also produced a series of three books documenting the Arab revolutions that broke out in 2011: The Glorious Tunisian Revolution; Syria: The Painful Road to Freedom; and Egypt’s Revolution (two volumes). These books deal with the causes and stages of the revolutions in Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt. These books are a rich contribution to the field of contemporary history thanks to their combination of documentation and narration of the day-to-day details of these revolutions and sharp analysis making connections between the social, economic and political backgrounds of each individual revolution.
Amatalalim Alsoswa is the first Yemeni woman to become an Ambassador for her country and a former government minister. Between 2000 and 2003, Alsowsa has served her country as Ambassador to the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Following her ambassadorial postings, Alsoswa was made Minister of Human Rights from 2003 to 2005. She later worked for the United Nations in New York, from 2006 to 2012 a period during which she held a variety of positions, including Assistant Secretary General, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Regional Director of the Arab States Bureau. From 2013 to 2014, she was a member of Yemen's National Dialogue Conference, a formal effort to help formulate a post-revolutionary political future for the country. Alsoswa also later served as the Managing Director of the Executive for the Acceleration of Aid Absorption in Yemen (2014-2015). She obtained her Bachelor of Arts from Cairo University in 1980 and an MA from American University in Washington, DC.
Ghanim Al-Najjar is a professor of political science at Kuwait University and a member of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS)'s Board of Directors. Previously, he was a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, served as director of the Center for Strategic and Future Studies, and was the editor of the Gulf Studies Series Journal, United Arab Emirates. Dr. Al-Najjar has been a visiting scholar at several universities, including Harvard's Human Rights Program, Law School, and the Kennedy School of Government. Until recently, he was the UN independent expert for Human Rights in Somalia, a mandate he held for 8 years. Dr. Al-Najjar headed and participated in a number of international fact-finding missions in several countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Somalia.
Dr. Al-Najjar is the founder of the Centre for Strategic and Future Studies in Kuwait University. He is a member of the executive committee of the Arab Sociological Association, and a member of the board of the Arab Human Rights Fund based in Beirut, as well as an international commissioner with the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. Moreover, he is a member of the editorial boards of several academic journals. The publication "The Challenges Facing Kuwaiti Democracy", which appeared in the Middle East Journal, is one of many of his published works.
