Juan Ricardo Cole

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For four decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian. Among his other recent works are Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (Bold Type Books, 2018) and The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, 2014). He has translated works of Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran. He has appeared widely on media, including the PBS News Hour, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes' All In, CNN, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has written about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf, and South Asia and about both extremist groups and peace movements. He is the proprietor of the Informed Comment news and analysis site. Cole conducts his research in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and Turkish as well as several European languages. He knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for more than a decade and continues to travel widely there. He has written, edited, or translated 19 books and authored over 100 articles and chapters.