Shahin Berenji

Shahin Berenji is a lecturer in the UCLA department of political science and an expert on international security, foreign policy decision-making, the Arab-Israeli conflict, American foreign policy in the Middle East, diplomatic history and the Cold War.

Berenji’s research centers around risky foreign policy initiatives and their short and long-term effects. He applies political psychology to understand why, and the conditions under which, leaders undertake peace initiatives in rivalries, especially those in the Middle East. Berenji has also studied how the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union originated, how it ran its course, and how it ended.

His forthcoming publications will focus on world leaders who have made bold diplomatic moves in the peace process with particular case studies examining Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s conciliatory worldview in the 1980s.