Leonard Binder

Leonard Binder is a professor of political science and the director of the Near East Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Professor Binder is a member of both the Islamic Studies and the Near East Studies Interdisciplinary Programs at UCLA.

Leonard Binder is an internationally known specialist on Middle East politics and Islamic political thought. His professorship in the Department is supported by the UCLA International Institute administration at UCLA. He is a founding member and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA). He has been a member of both the Comparative Politics and the Middle East Studies committees of the Social Science Research Council. He has been Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellow, and has held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Jerusalem. He has served as department Chair at both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago and UCLA's Near East Center. He has done field research in Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Pakistan.

Published works

*"Religion and Politics in Pakistan" (1961)
*"Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (1962)"
*"The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (1964)"
*"In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power and the second Stratum in Egypt (1978)"
*"Islamic Liberalism (1988)"