Institutskolloquium IfP (04.11.2026) – Current Authoritarian Trends in the Middle East: A presentation of the Tyranny Tracker

Malaak Jamal is HRF’s director of policy and research, overseeing its research and analyzing political regime developments in countries under authoritarian rule. She received a Master of Arts in diplomacy and international relations from Seton Hall University, specializing in human rights, international law, and post-conflict state reconstruction and sustainability. Jamal received her Bachelor of Arts from Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU), where she double majored in political science with a concentration in international relations and sociology. She was awarded FDU’s Outstanding Achievement in Political Science award. She completed her minor in Middle East studies at the American University in Dubai. Jamal’s opinions have been featured in TIME, The Washington Post, CNN, The Journal of Democracy, The News Lens, and Raseef22.

Charles Sutherland is a research fellow at the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), leveraging more than a decade of experience in research and programs to monitor and report on regimes across SWANA for the Tyranny Tracker.

Charles has lived in Amman and Cairo for a combined seven years and uses multiple dialects of Arabic in his research. He holds a MA in Comparative Middle East Politics and Societies from the University of Tübingen and the American University in Cairo, a BA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, and was a Fulbright-Hays CASA Fellow at the Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan.