Vahid Brown is a Harmony Fellow and FBI instructor at the   Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC). He holds a degree in Islamic studies from Reed College and his seven research languages include Arabic and Persian. He has spent three years living and teaching in East Asia and speaks Mandarin Chinese.  Prior to coming to work for the CTC, he published extensively on medieval Spanish Islamic and Jewish thought; nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iranian religious movements; and contemporary Western approaches to the study of Islam.  As a research fellow at the CTC, he was one of the lead researchers for the Militant Ideology Atlas; was a contributing author and chief editor of the CTC’s second Harmony report, Al-Qa’ida’s (Mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa; and was the sole author of the third Harmony report, Cracks in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa’ida from 1989-2006.  He is also one of the authors of the forthcoming Harmony report, Sinjar Two: al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s Foreign Recruiting, Finances, and Future. As an instructor for the CTC’s FBI counter-terrorism training program, he designs curricula on Islamist terrorism and teaches regular courses both at the FBI Academy and for Joint Terrorism Task Force training events at FBI Field Offices throughout the United States.  His work has been featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and Kuwait’s al-Jarida, and other national and international media outlets. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.