Akbar Ahmed is an Pakistani professor, author, filmmaker and former civil servant. For more than three decades, he was a civil servant in Pakistan, where his posts included Political Agent in the Tribal Areas (1978–1980), Commissioner in Balochistan (1984–1988), and Pakistan High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland (1999). During his acamedic career, he was a visiting professor many universities, including Princeton, Harvard and Cambridge. In 2001, he was appointed Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, DC. In 2006, presented and narrated The Glories of Islamic Art, a three-part British television series for Channel 5. He is the author of the book Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2007.