Johansen, Baber

(Acting Director, ILSP & Affiliated Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Professor of Islamic Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA) Johansen was appointed Professor of Islamic Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School in 2005. He was directeur d'études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Centre d'étude des normes juridiques), Paris (1995–2005), and Professor for Islamic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (1972–1995). His book Muhammad Husain Haikal Europa und der Orient im Weltbild eines ägyptischen Liberalen (1967) examines twentieth-century liberal interpretations of Islam; Islam und Staat (1982) looks at modern Muslim debates on state models; and Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent (1988) considers long-term changes in classical and postclassical legal doctrine. Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh (1999) introduces the relation between law and theology in Islam and Western efforts to analyze both forms of knowledge. Johansen was twice elected a member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and has been a visiting professor at the Watson Institute (Providence), Harvard University, and Ca’ Foscari (Venice). He is one of the executive editors of Islamic Law and Society, serves on the editorial boards of a number of French and Lebanese periodicals, and has published many articles in international journals.