Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus at Princeton University. He is an established expert on the Near East and Islam, but has also been associated with arguing for democracy promotion and even forced democracy, based on the model of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey.

Speaking of his own interests, Lewis wrote Like most university teachers, I have had a somewhat narrow field in which I conducted my own research, a rather wider one in which I was willing to assist others undertake research, and a still wider one in which I was willing to risk undergraduate teaching. My earliest interest was in medieval Islamic History, especially that of religious movements such as the Ismailis and Assassins. The war years awakened and nourished an interest in the contemporary Middle East, which I have retained ever since. My major research interest for some time past has been the history of the Ottoman Empire. At the present time I am trying to combine all three by studying the history of the relations between Europe and Islam from early through Ottoman to modern times.

Politics and Islam
He has written of a Middle Eastern perception, during the Cold War, that the U.S. was weak, and current actions (2007) do little to reverse that perception.

It has been suggested that the George W. Bush Administration followed a "Lewis Doctrine" in conducting the Iraq War, expecting a Kemalist change in that country.