Dr. Jason Olson is a scholar specializing in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean region. He has received research grants to study the Abraham Accords, focusing particularly on how they align with U.S. interests. He collaborates with various ambassadors to expand the successful peacebuilding model of the Abraham Accords to other Muslim-majority countries.
Jason earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University in 2016. His first book, America’s Road to Jerusalem: The Impact of the Six-Day War on Protestant Politics, was published by Lexington Books in 2018. In this work, he examined the rise of Christian Zionism and its impact on U.S. foreign policy and strategic interests in the Middle East and North Africa. His second book, The Burning Book, won a national award in creative nonfiction. His most recent article, From Arab-Israeli Conflict to Arab-Israeli Integration: A New Curriculum to Understand the Contemporary Middle East, was co-published in the Journal of the Middle East and Africa.
During his doctoral studies, Jason held fellowships with prestigious research centers, including the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, the Hertog Global Strategy Initiative at Columbia University (focused on religious violence/terrorism), and the American Jewish Archives, among others. In 2013, he served as a teaching fellow at the Summer Institute for Middle East Studies at Brandeis, where he taught an international group of scholars in both Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Through his academic and fieldwork, Jason aims to foster dialogue and peacebuilding in the region by studying political and diplomatic models that promote better relations between countries and contribute to regional stability in the Middle East