Lawrence G. Potter was Deputy Director of Gulf/2000 from 1994 until 2016, and has been Adjunct Associate Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University since 1996. A graduate of Tufts College, he received an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a Ph.D. in History (1992) from Columbia University. He taught in Iran for four years before the revolution. From 1984 to 1992 he was Senior Editor at the Foreign Policy Association, a national, nonpartisan organization devoted to world affairs education for the general public, and currently serves on the FPA's Editorial Advisory Committee. Potter specializes in the history of Iran and the Persian Gulf and U.S. policy toward the Middle East. He published "The Persian Gulf: Tradition and Transformation" in the FPA’s Headline Series (2011). He co-edited (with Gary Sick) The Persian Gulf at the Millennium: Essays in Politics, Economy, Security, and Religion (St. Martin's Press,1997), Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus (Palgrave, 2002), and Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). He also edited The Persian Gulf in History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (Hurst, 2013) and The Persian Gulf in Modern Times: People, Ports and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).