John Ricardo Irfan "Juan" Cole (born October 23, 1952) is an American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Dead link; no archive located.http://events.umn.edu/event?occurrence=398490;event=114965 Dead link at University of Minnesota Events web page. He is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
Cole was one of the first American scholars to produce specialized works on the thought and history of the Twelver Shi'ite branch of Islam. His Sacred Space and Holy War (IB Tauris, 2002), was widely read as a primer on Shi'ism by Americans after the US invasion of Iraq. He wrote about Iraqi Shiism during and after the US occupation.
He has also contributed to theorizing Middle East revolutions, including the 1882 ʻUrabi revolt in Egypt, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the 2011–2013 Arab Spring. In recent years he has contributed to Quranic studies and the study of the origins of Islam, medieval Persian literature, and "Islamic Peace Studies." Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment (juancole.com).
Early life and education Cole was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his father—a United States Army Signal Corpsman—was stationed at Sandia Base. It was there that Cole fils acquired the nickname "Juan" (or "Juanito"). As a military family, the Coles would relocate many times, including lengthy stints in Paris, Fort Bragg, Orleans, Asmara (where Juan would first encounter Islam), and Falls Church, Virginia. He won a scholarship to Northwestern University, where he majored in history and religion. Northwestern is located near the Chicago (national) headquarters of the Baháʼí religion, which the Protestant-raised Cole joined in 1972, attracted by its progressive values. He would later (in 1996) resign from the religion, complaining of fundamentalist tendencies within its leadership. His plan to study at the American University of Beirut was interrupted by the Lebanese Civil War, with the eventual result that he transferred to the American University of Cairo, earning an MA in Arabic Studies in 1978. In 1984 he received a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from UCLA, with a dissertation on the Shi'ite-ruled Kingdom of Awadh (1722–1856, now part of Uttar Pradesh). During field research, he met and (in 1982) married the attorney Shahin Malik in Lahore.Cole's CV, https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/michigan-lsa/people-update/cv/jrcole-04132023-121326-JuanCole.pdf
Appointments and awards Cole was hired to teach modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan in 1984, rising through the ranks to become associate and then full professor. On October 16, 2025, the Regents of the University of Michigan approved the appointment of Cole as the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History, effective September 1, 2025.
Cole was awarded Fulbright–Hays fellowships to India (1982) and to Egypt (1985–1986). In 1991 he held a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for the study of Shia Islam in Iran. From 1999 until 2004, Juan Cole was the editor of The International Journal of Middle East Studies. He has served in professional offices for the American Institute of Iranian Studies and on the editorial board of the journal Iranian Studies. He is a member of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and served as the organization's president for 2006. In 2006, he received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism administered by Hunter College.Faculty News and Awards , Department of History: University of Michigan, 2007 He is a member of the Community Council of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Overview of major works
Of Roots of North Indian Shiism in Iran and Iraq, Duke University specialist in Islam Bruce Lawrence wrote, "One would be hard pressed to find a monograph on any aspect of South Asian Islam more extensively researched or carefully argued than this first book from Juan Cole. It is also boldly revisionist. Pace the title, the author concerns himself less with the external roots of North Indian Shi'ism than the internal development of a new Shi'i-oriented ideology among one segment of North Indian Muslim elites." He added that the book exceeded other works on this subject "In conceptual breadth and explanatory yield." - Bruce Lawrence, Review of "Roots of North Indian Shiism," Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 24, 1990, pp. 46-47.
With regard to Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East, Timothy Mitchell, a New York University political scientist, called it an "impressive work of scholarship examines Egypt's social and cultural formation during the third quarter of the nineteenth century to uncover the causes of the 1881-82 revolution." He noted that the book was based on extensive primary sources in the Egyptian National Archives. He says the author's social-history approach allowed Cole to demonstrate that the movement was a revolution and not just a military coup. Cole focused on the intelligentsia, the merchants and artisans, and the landowning peasantry as the main revolutionary actors. Mitchell said that Cole drew on but went beyond Theda Skocpol's notion of conjunctural revolutions. - Timothy Mitchell, Review of "Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East," Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 28, no. 2 (December 1994), pp. 207–208.
Engaging the Muslim World () is a 2009 non-fiction book about the relationship between the United States and the Arab and Muslim worlds written by University of Michigan historian Juan Cole. His goal in writing the book, which is based on twentieth-century State Department archival documents and Arabic, Persian and Urdu primary sources, was to illustrate the true Muslim perspective towards the U.S. and explain why that has developed.Engaging the Muslim World . Macmillan Publishers. Accessed May 1, 2009. The book recommends full engagement and diplomacy with all forms of Islam and criticizes the policy of preemptive military action, arguing that it should be used only as a last resort.Muslim Angst Vs. American Anxiety . By Sam Oglesby. The Bulletin. Published April 24, 2009. The book blasts what it calls the Bush administration's "Islamophobic discourse."
Of Engaging the Muslim World prominent Middle East historian Ira Lapidus wrote, "Cole points out that Islam anxiety is fostered by a way of thinking that gives precedence to cultural and ideological conceptions of politics. Americans typically think in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender and ideology as defining political differences, but not in terms of political, economic and class interests. Indeed, it is almost taboo in American politics to raise the issue of class. Professor Cole, to the contrary, deals with national state issues precisely in terms of political, economic and social conflict."
Cole founded the Global Americana Institute to translate works concerning the United States into Arabic. The first volume was selected works of Thomas Jefferson, and the second was a translation of a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. along with selected speeches and writings. The third was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
After September 11, 2001, Cole turned increasingly to writing on radical Muslim movements, the Iraq War, United States foreign policy, and the Iran crisis. He calls his work not "contemporary history" but "current affairs history:" "Blogging Current Affairs History," Journal of Contemporary History July 2011 vol. 46 no. 3 658-670
Cole testified on Iraq before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2004: "Juan Cole's Senate Testimony Brief," United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004.
Informed Comment blog Since 2002, Cole has published the blog Informed Comment, covering "History, Middle East, South Asia, Religious Studies, and the war on terror." Cole's prominence quickly rose through his blog,Curt Guyette, "The Blog of War," Metrotimes (25 August 2004). and Foreign Policy commented in 2004, "Cole's transformation into a public intellectual embodies many of the dynamics that have heightened the impact of the blogosphere. He wanted to publicize his expertise, and he did so by attracting attention from elite members of the blogosphere. As Cole made waves within the virtual world, others in the real world began to take notice."Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell, "Web of Influence," Foreign Policy (November/December 2004).
In 2006, National Journal called Cole "the most respected voice on foreign policy on the left"The Hotline: National Journal's Daily Briefing on Politics, Blogometer Profiles: Informed Comment , National Journal, October 2, 2006 and his blog ranked the 99th most popular in 2009, but it has since fallen off the list.
Views Leading up to the 2008 United States presidential election, Cole chastised several candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, for making bellicose statements about Iran in order to present themselves in a tougher or more conservative light.
In 2002, Cole rejected the Bush administration's early claims of Iraqi cooperation with Al-Qaeda by commenting that Saddam Hussein had "persecuted and killed both Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists in great number," as well as claims to the effect that Ba'athist Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. Rather than making America safer, he says, the war has ironically had the opposite effect: inspiring anti-U.S. militants.
In 2004, Cole pointed out that he was against boycotting Israeli professors: "I have stood with Israeli colleagues and against any attempt to marginalize them or boycott them."
In a 2005 speech at the Middle East Policy Council, Cole was critical of the U.S. allying itself with offshoots of the Islamic Dawa Party in the Iraq War but vehemently opposing Hezbollah in Lebanon. at Middle East Policy Council.
According to Efraim Karsh, Cole has done "hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East" and characterized Cole's analysis of the era as "derivative." He has also responded to Cole's criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the "Israel lobby" by comparing them to accusations that have been made in antisemitic writings. Cole replied directly to Karsh in his blog.
Jeremy Sapienza of Antiwar.com has criticized Cole for what he deems as partisan bias on issues of war and peace, citing his support for wars supported by the U.S. Democratic Party as the Yugoslav Wars and the 2011 military intervention in Libya, while opposing wars supported by the U.S. Republican Party such as the wars in Iraq.Sapienza, Jeremy, "Juan Cole's Conveniently Partisan Intervention Issues", Antiwar.com, August 23, 2011.
Ahmadinejad's remarks on Israel
Cole and Christopher Hitchens traded barbs regarding the translation and meaning of a passage referring to Israel in a speech by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fathi Nazila of The New York Timess Tehran bureau translated the passage as "Our dear Imam [Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map."
In an article published at the Slate website, Hitchens accused Cole of attempting to minimize and distort the meaning of the speech, which Hitchens understood to be a repetition of "the standard line" that "the state of Israel is illegitimate and must be obliterated." Hitchens also denigrated Cole's competence in both Persian and "plain English" and described him as a Muslim apologist.