Lisa Anderson is Special Lecturer and James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is the Principal Investigator for a commission supported by the Carnegie Corporation to develop guidelines for the conduct of responsible, ethical and constructive social inquiry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dr. Anderson served as President of the American University in Cairo for five years from 2011- 2016. Prior to her appointment as President, she was the University’s provost, a position she had assumed in 2008. She is Dean Emerita of SIPA; she led the school from 1997-2007. Among her books are The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 and Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century; she has also published numerous scholarly articles.
Dr. Anderson is a trustee of the Aga Khan University and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She is a member emerita of the Boards of Human Rights Watch and Tufts University, and served as elected President of the Middle East Studies Association and as Chair of the Board of the Social Science Research Council. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations, she has received honorary degrees from Monmouth University and the American University in Paris.