Yousof Azizi

Yousof Azizi is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in Public Administration/Public Affairs at Virginia Tech’s School of Public & International Affairs. He is now working on his dissertation about U.S. foreign policy decision-making, presidential studies, and Iran's nuclear program. In summer 2021, Yousof was a lecturer for PAPA 6214: Public Policy Process, one of the core requirements for the MPA program at the Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP). He was selected as a 2021 Fellow by Public Administration Theory Network (PAT-Net). Yousof previously worked as a research assistant at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. Yousof is a frequent commentator on US-Iran relations, the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA), and Iran’s regional and domestic politics on both English and Persian speaking media, such as BBC Persian. In 2015, Yousof graduated with a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He is also a graduate of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, with both a BSc and MSc in chemical engineering. His primary area of interest was energy policy and security.

Research Interests

• Foreign policy decision-making
• Administrative politics
• Energy and environmental policy
• American political development

Publications

• Azizi, Y. (2021). President Trump’s Iran policy. In M. A. Genovese, & A. D. Howard (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (4th ed.). New York: Facts On File.
• Azizi, Y. (2020). [Review essay of the book US foreign policy decision-making from Kennedy to Obama: Responses to international challenges, by A. R. Hybel]. The International Public Management Review, 20(1), 44-49. Retrieved from https://journals.sfu.ca/ipmr/index.php/ipmr/article/view/399/389.
  
• Azizi, Y. (2021, November 28). Reviving the Iran nuclear deal is the key to regional stability. Responsible Statecraft. Retrieved from https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/11/28/reviving-the-iran-nuclear-deal-is-the-key-to-regional-stability.
  
• Azizi, Y. (2020, October 2). The Trump administration’s turn to covert action against Iran: A sign that “Maximum Pressure” failed. International Affairs Review. Retrieved from https://iar-gwu.org/blog/the-trump-administrations-turn-to-covert-action-against-irana-sign-that-maximum-pressure-failed.

Work In Progress

• Inspectors General: An Overview of Oversight, Accountability, and Separation of Powers in American Government, 1981-2020. (Co-authored with Matt Dull & Patrick Roberts).
• The International Atomic Energy Agency's Reputation: Coverage of the IAEA in Iranian Media since The Islamic Revolution of 1979.
  
• A Review of GovTrack.us Model and How to Extend the Model. (Co-authored with Aditya Sai Phutane & Timothy Kinoshita).
  
• Technocracy; the Third-World Discourse of Neoliberalism in the Cold War Era: Case Study of the Establishment of Sharif University of Technology in Iran. (Co-authored with Mohammad H. Badamchi)