Feisal al-Istrabadi is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and professor of international law and diplomacy at the Maurer School of Law and the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington He served as ambassador and deputy permanent representative of Iraq to the United Nations from 2004 to 2007 and was assigned to the Office of the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs until 2012. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science, holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington, and is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. His most recent book, Ascending India and Its State Capacity (with William R. Thompson), was published in 2017. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.