Introducing: Office Hours with Dr. Shushan!

Lots of fun pics in this post...

Aug 20, 2025

Folks, I’m super excited to announced a new feature of The Debrief, which I’m calling Office Hours with Dr. Shushan!

What are Office Hours with Dr. Shushan?

I’m so glad you asked! Office Hours are an opportunity to pose your questions on topics covered in The Debrief — including Israel-Palestine, US policy toward the Middle East, American Jewish politics, and the intersection of all the above with US democracy — and get (hopefully!) thoughtful answers from an expert. Whereas The Debrief’s live conversations feature me in conversation with other experts, this will be your chance to engage informally with me and get my candid takes. I’ll ask participants to send me questions ahead of time, but it will also be possible to pose questions during Office Hours.

Who is invited to join?

Everyone is warmly invited! But folks who would like to join need to be(come) paid subscribers. Which is to say, if you’ve been appreciating The Debrief and thinking of purchasing a subscription, this is the perfect time to do it!

I know that there are lots of folks who can’t afford a paid subscription right now — and I’m grateful for the many hundreds of free subscribers who have joined up since I launched The Debrief last month. Truly! You’ll continue to get access to plenty of free content.

But for this to be a sustainable enterprise, we’ll need folks who are able to step up — whether you’ve appreciated my work as an academic and through my years at Americans for Peace Now and J Street, or you’ve just learned about me through Substack — to chip in so that this platform can grow, thrive, and serve as a resource for everyone.

We live in a time in which truth is under attack and expertise is disdained. You’re here because The Debrief brings you principled voices, fascinating conversations, and thought-provoking writing that always brings the receipts so you can fact check and dig deeper, whenever you want to. I’m deeply honored that many of you have already decided this work is worthy of your financial support. Office Hours with Dr. Shushan will make The Debrief even more worth your while. And I encourage more folks to jump on the bandwagon. Now is a great time to do it.

If you have the financial capacity to support The Debrief more generously, please consider becoming a Founding Member. (If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can upgrade to a Founding Membership.)

If you’d like to give a gift subscription for a friend, you can do that, too!

Give a gift subscription

What happens next?

I’ll send out a poll to paid subscribers later today with some date/time options to discover the one that works for the most folks who want to attend. The poll will also solicit questions that you’d like me to answer. Keep your eyes peeled for that email if you’re a paid subscriber.

What if I want to know more about Dr. Shushan?

Totally reasonable! A short bio follows, but if you already know me or you simply prefer pictures to words, feel free to scroll down for some photos that will give you an introduction who I am.

I began my career as an academic. Educated at Harvard (AB in Government, summa), Oxford (MPhil in International Relations, Marshall Scholar), and Yale (PhD in Political Science), I went on to become an assistant professor of Government at The College of William and Mary and focused on the comparative politics and international relations of the Middle East. I am passionate about education and mentoring and have also taught at Yale and Wesleyan University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. Through my research and language studies (in Arabic and Hebrew), I’ve traveled to much of the Middle East, including Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Israel-Palestine.

Seeking to leverage my expertise to impact US foreign policy, I moved to Washington, DC. I’ve worked for two progressive Jewish organizations with missions to shift US policy on Israel-Palestine. At J Street, I was Director of Government Affairs, leading the organization’s formidable lobbying team. Subsequently, I became J Street’s first Director of Policy and stood up and led the J Street Policy Center. At Americans for Peace Now, I served as Director of Policy and Government Relations.

I am now a Senior Resident Affiliate at the Center for Jewish Civilization in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service; a public speaker and media pundit; and of course, the writer, editor, producer, and host of The Debrief with Debra Shushan.