Louis Cantori, Ph.D., is Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He did his graduate work in Political Science and on the Middle East at the University of Chicago. He studied Islamic philosophy in the Faculty of Theology, al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. He was a Fulbright student in Egypt in 1963-65 and subsequently was visiting professor at the American University in Cairo in 1974-76. In 1969-70 he did fieldwork in Morocco and returned as a Fulbright researcher in 1994-95. Altogether, he has lived about seven years in the Middle East and has done research, visited or done consulting activities in Egypt, Morocco, Israel, the Occupied Territories, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and Iraq (where he was present up to five days before the invasion of Kuwait). As a specialist on development, he has been a consultant for US A.I.D. and numerous private companies in the area of water and wastewater, roads, government organization, etc.

He is the author or editor of four books, including Local Politics and Development in the Middle East. He is the author of over sixty articles, including "Modernization and Development " and “ Republic” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World ; "Civil Society, Liberalism and the Corporatist Alternative in the Middle East," Middle East Studies Association Bulletin (1997) ;and “Political Succession in the Middle East”, Middle East Policy (2002) and “Democracy From Within Islam”, Center for the Study of Democracy Bulletin (London), Summer 2003, vol.10, no.2 and  most recently, co-editor, ”The Bush Menu for Change in the Middle East”, Middle East Policy (Spring 2005). He is presently co-editing for publication, The State, Democracy and Political Reform in the Middle East,  and researching and writing Tyranny and Domination in the Middle East: Islamic Republican Democracy.

He is a founder of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, The Circle of Tradition and Progress (Muslim and Western intellectuals in the Middle East, London and Washington, DC) and The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, where he has been a board member and a participant in projects in Yemen, Jordan, and Turkey. He has held chairs at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the US Marine Corps University and is a former sergeant of U.S.  Marines.

He is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the U.S. Department of State. He is a former adjunct professor, U.S. Marine Command and Staff College and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University and he is professor of political science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is adjunct professor, Graduate School of the Islamic and Social Sciences, Ashburn, VA and advisor to its president.

He is an international spokesman in radio, television, and print media in such venues as Alalam TV, (Tehren); Mustakillah TV(London) ABC Radio and Television: PTV, The News Hour, C-Span, ABC TV(Baltimore), NBCTV(Baltimore), Fox TV (Baltimore), CBSTV(Baltimore), CBC (Toronto), VOA, AP, Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, Italian News Network(Rome), Nippon News(Tokyo)  plus op ed publications in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Dallas Morning Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times.