Vish Sakthivel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of International Studies
Dr. Sakthivel joined the College of Charleston in 2022. Prior to joining CofC, Dr. Sakthivel was a Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University, and a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.
Formerly a foreign policy analyst in Washington, D.C., and Peace Corps Volunteer to Morocco, Dr. Sakthivel is also interested in the history of U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East and North Africa, and its effects on MENA politics and culture, and on the role of Islam in statecraft. She has served as a senior analyst at two major think tanks at which time she published the monograph Al-Adl wal-Ihsan: Morocco’s Islamist Challenge (Washington Institute Press, 2014). She continues to be a regular source on Algeria and Morocco to the media and to the U.S. and foreign governments, and has been published in Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, the National Interest, among other publications, and with the Brookings Institution, the Hudson Institute, and the Middle East Institute. She is also a frequent guest lecturer to the Foreign Service Institute at the U.S. State Department in which she instructs government officials and future diplomats on North African political history and culture.