Richard Darilek Appointed Director of RAND-Qatar Policy Institute

Richard Darilek, a RAND senior political scientist, has been appointed the new director of the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute (RQPI), RAND President and CEO James A. Thomson announced today.

Darilek will be based in Doha, Qatar. He succeeds economist C. Richard Neu, who has completed his three-year term as director of RQPI. Neu will continue his work on economic issues at the Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters of RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

RAND and the Qatar Foundation created RQPI in 2003. RQPI harnesses the research and analytic skills of RAND experts in Qatar, the United States and Europe to study some of the most important issues facing the Middle East. It also works to train the region's policy analysts in research methods that can help leaders make informed policy decisions.

One co-chairperson of RQPI is Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, chairperson of the Qatar Foundation and Consort of the Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. The other co-chairperson is RAND Executive Vice President Michael Rich.

“Richard Neu has done an outstanding job launching the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute and turning it from an idea into a reality that is now helping to improve policy and decision-making in the greater Middle East,” Thomson said. “Richard Darilek's long and diverse experience at RAND will help RQPI build on its early achievements to play an even more important role serving our clients in the region in the years ahead.”

Before joining RAND in 1982, Darilek directed the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions, and was a special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Earlier, he taught history at Hebert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York.

At RAND, Darilek has served as director of the policy and strategy program within the Arroyo Center (the U.S. Army's research center) and associate head of the former behavioral science department. Darilek has conducted a number of studies at RAND involving crisis and conflict prevention, including studies focused on the Middle East.

Darilek earned a bachelor of arts degree from Rice University, and a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Princeton University.