WATCH: A Conversation with His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al Faisal

His Royal Highness (HRH) Prince Turki Al Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is Founder and Trustee of the King Faisal Foundation and Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

HRH began his schooling at the Model School in Taif and went on to gain his high school diploma at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, the United States of America. HRH then completed his studies at the Georgetown University.

HRH was appointed Advisor at the Royal Court in 1973. In 1977, HRH was appointed Director-General of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), Saudi Arabia’s main foreign intelligence service, with the rank of Minister, and headed the GID until 2001.

In 2002, HRH was appointed Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. HRH served in the position until 2005 when he was appointed Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States of America. He retired in 2007.

HRH’s Roles around the World:

• Visiting Distinguished Professor at the Georgetown University

• Honorary Professor at the Tor Vergata University of Rome

• Trustee of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford

• Trustee of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the Georgetown University

• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria

• Member of the Board of the Beirut Institute

• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Arab and International Relations

• Chairman of the Board of Directors of Al-Quds Fund and Endowment

• Member of the Advisory Council of the Munich Security Conference

• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Asia Society

• HRH is a member of the Advisory board of Think20 (T20), which was tasked by the Saudi G20 leadership to provide policy recommendations.

In addition, HRH has been an active participant to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, the Global Economic Symposium, and the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting. HRH was a commissioner for the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, which was a joint initiative of the Australian and Japanese Governments.

Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy of the National Endowment for Democracy, and serves as the Faculty Director of the Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative and the Initiative on Democracy in Hard Places. His research focuses on political development in Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority countries. He is the author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform with Jason Brownlee and Andrew Reynolds (Oxford University Press, 2015), and several articles and book chapters. He is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar, a trustee of the American University in Cairo, and the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Paul and Daisy Soros foundation, among others. He holds an AB from Brown and a Ph.D from Yale, both in political science.