Paul Salem

Paul Salem is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.

Paul Salem was the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. He works and publishes on the regional and international relations of the Middle East as well as issues of political development and democratization in the Arab world. 

Prior to joining Carnegie in 2006, Salem was the general director of the Fares Foundation, and from 1989 to 1999 he founded and directed the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, Lebanon’s leading public policy think tank. In 2002, Salem was a member of the senior review committee for the United Nations Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report. In 2006, he served as a member of the National Commission for Electoral Law Reform in Lebanon. He has also held various positions at the American University of Beirut. He is a frequent television and radio commentator on political issues relating to the Middle East and Arab world.

Salem is the author of a number of books and articles on the Middle East, including “Building Cooperation in the Eastern Middle East” (Carnegie, 2010) and “The Arab State: Assisting or Obstructing Development?” (Carnegie, 2010). He writes regularly in the Arab press and has been published in numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, the National Interest, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico.