Mehrdad Izady

Mehrdad Michael R.S.C. Izady (born 1963), is a contemporary writer on ethnic and cultural topics, particularly the Greater Middle East, and Kurds. He was born to a Kurdish father and a Belgian mother, and spent much of his youth in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Korea, as his diplomat parents moved from one assignment to another. He received his BA degree in History, Political Science and Geography from Kansas University, and then attended Syracuse University where he received two masters degrees in Remote Sensing-Cartography and in International Relations. He received his PhD at the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Columbia University in 1992.^[1] He taught for six years in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and History at the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. He has testified before two US Congressional Committees and has authored many books and articles on Middle East and Southeast European subjects.^[2] He has been a part-time faculty at the Department of History at Fordham University and Pace University since 2001. He also continues his educational services to the US military, diplomatic corps and the NATO. Since 1997, he has also been a Master Adjunct professor at the Joint Special Operations University, Florida.

Izady is also a cartographer who has produced work on ethno-cultural topics of the Old World. His annotated cartographic works have been used by the atlases, authors, the international media—to include the National Geographic, The Economist as well as the US military, the UN and various other entities. His work can be found at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, Gulf 2000 Project web site.^[3]

Books

The Kurds: A Concise Handbook, 268 pp., Taylor & Francis Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0844817279
The Sharafnâma, Or, The History of the Kurdish Nation, 1597, By Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi, translated into English and annotated by M. Izady, 302 pp., Mazda Publishers, 2005. ISBN 1568590741

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: The Kurdish Predicament, pp. 71–99 in "Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War", Edited by Lawrence G. Potter, Gary G. Sick, 224 pp., Pekgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1403976090^[4]
Kurds, Encyclopedia of the Developing World, 1759 pp., Rouledge Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1579583881
Kurds and the Foundations of the State of Iraq, 1917-1932, pp. 95–109, in "The Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921", Edited by Reeva S. Simon, Eleanor Harvey Tejirian, 181 pp., Columbia University Press, 2004. ISBN 0231132921
Gulf and Indian Ocean Basin Ethnic Diversity: An Evolutionary History in "Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles and the Search for Consensus", Edited by G. Sick and L. Potter, 284 pp., Palgrave Press, 2002. ISBN 0312239505.
The Geopolitical Realities of Kurdistan vs. Hopes for a New World Order in "Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order", Edited by Phyllis Bennis, Michel Moushabeck, 538 pp., Interlink Pub Group Inc, 1998. ISBN 1566561124
The Kurdish Demographic Revolution and Its Socio-Political Implications in "Contrasts and Solutions in the Middle East", Edited by Ole Høiris, Sefa Martin Yürükel, Aarhus University Press, 562 pp., 1997. ISBN 8772886919
E uno plurium?: A Projection on the Future of the National Minorities and their Identity in the 21st-Century in "The Transnationalization of Ethnicity and World Politics", Edited by J. Cole and E. Skinner, Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, Howard University, 1995.