Mike Doran, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and previously a vsiting professor at New York University, is an academic expert on US policy toward the Middle East. He has held a number of senior government posts related both to Middle East policy and strategic communication, including an appointment at the Pentagon, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy, and one at the NSC, as the Senior Director of the Near East and North Africa.

At DoD, Mike was responsible for promoting greater cooperation between the State Department and the Pentagon in the field of strategic communication, with a particular emphasis on countering al-Qaeda's ideology. At the White House, he helped to devise and coordinate national strategies on a variety of Middle East issues, including Arab-Israeli relations and efforts to contain Iran.

Prior to government service, Mike taught at Princeton University , where his work focused on the international politics of the Middle East . His publications include a book, Pan-Arabism before Nasser, which analyzes the first Arab-Israeli war as an inter-Arab conflict; and an article in Foreign Affairs, "Somebody Else's Civil War," which was first article to advance the thesis that Osama bin Laden used the attacks of 9/11 as a tool for influencing conflicts within Muslim societies.