Draft:Wisam Alshaibi

Wisam Alshaibi is a sociologist and a former musician. He is an assistant professor of social research and public policy at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Career
Originally from Colorado, Alshaibi is a drummer who joined the post-hardcore band The Blackout Pact in 2003. The band moved to New York City and was discovered by punk musician Geoff Rickly when Alshaibi met him at the hot dog restaurant where he was working at the time. The Blackout Pact released an album with Astro Magnetics and played the Warped Tour in 2006.

Alshaibi later received his B.A. degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in selfhood, political violence, war, and foreign policy, especially in the two U.S. invasions of Iraq.

Alshaibi's research has exposed the links of the Iraq Memory Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Kanan Makiya to preserve knowledge of the atrocities of the Saddam Hussein regime, to the Pentagon. He revealed that the foundation received $5.1 million in contracts from the Pentagon from 2004 to 2006 in order to publicize Saddam Hussein's atrocities as part of the U.S. war effort. According to Alshaibi, this project was intended to make Iraq more open to an American invasion and was used to justify the controversial policy of de-Ba'athification.

Personal life
Alshaibi is the brother of the filmmaker Usama Alshaibi and the artist Sama Alshaibi. His family is Iraqi and Palestinian.