Dr. Qamar-ul Huda teaches courses on Islam, conflict resolution, religious studies and global affairs at Georgetown University. His research focuses on the intersection of religion, public policy, intellectual history, ethics and comparative religious peacemaking. Dr. Huda was listed in the Muslim 500: The World’s Most Influential Muslims in 2016 published by the Royal Strategic Islamic Centre in Amman, Jordan.

Dr. Huda’s book, The Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam provides a critical analysis of models of nonviolent strategies and practical challenges of contemporary peacemaking in Muslim majority nations. He published over forty-five articles on peace-building, conflict resolution, extremism, comparative ethics, Islamic theology, Sufism, and the dynamics of interfaith dialogue in international academic journals and magazines. He received research grants from the Social Science Research Council, American Academy of Religion, UCLA’s International Security Studies program, and he was a Fulbright scholar. His earlier work examined the philosophical, theological and mystical dimensions of the celebrated Suhrawardi Sufi order published as Striving for Divine Union: Spiritual Exercises of the Suhrawardi Sufis. He earned his doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Islamic intellectual history, his Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University, New York, and earned several certificates in advanced topics in religion, kalam, and philosophy of law in Islamic seminaries and universities abroad.

Currently, Dr. Qamar-ul Huda is a Senior Policy Advisor for U.S. Secretary John Kerry’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Dr. Huda worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) as a senior expert in the MENA region and South Asia region where he focused on field work involving conflict resolution and conflict management training to civil society members, and he cultivated the discipline of conflict resolution studies in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Middle Eastern schools.