Youssef Belal is an anthropologist and political theorist. He is also a UN diplomat and peace mediator who served as political director of UN missions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and was named a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. He is author of Le cheikh et le calife: Sociologie religieuse de l'Islam politique au Maroc (The sheikh and the caliph: Religious sociology of political Islam in Morocco).