Joseph Massad teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. He is the author of Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (Columbia University Press 2001), The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism(Routledge, 2006), Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago Press, 2007). His book Desiring Arabs received the Lionel Trilling Book Award in 2008. The seminar paper he will be presenting titled "The Democratic Offensive and the Defenses of Islam" is a chapter from his forthcoming book Islam in Liberalism.