After receiving his Ph. D. from Yale University in 1968, Ali Banuazizi taught at Yale and the University of Southern California before joining the Boston College Faculty in 1971. Since then, he has held visiting appointments and fellowships at the University of Tehran, Princeton, Harvard, and Oxford University, and MIT. He served as the founding editor of the journal of Iranian Studies, from 1968 to 1982. He is a past President of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

Ali Banuazizi is the author of numerous articles on society, culture, and politics in Iran and the Middle East, and the coauthor (with A. Ashraf) of Social Classes, the State and Revolution in Iran (2008, in Persian) and coeditor (with Myron Weiner) of three books on politics, religion and society in Southwest and Central Asia. He is currently associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World.

Co-Sponsored with the Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar.