Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Director of the Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities, including Cornell University, the Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, Princeton University, Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science.

His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East (Westview Press, 2003; updated version, 2004) was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. His most recent book is a co-edited with contributions volume, The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine? which was published in March 2023 with Cornell University Press. His other publications include Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990); International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. with Milton Esman (Cornell University Press, 1995); Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. with Michael Barnett (Cornell University Press, 2002), The Sadat Lectures: Words and Images on Peace, 1997-2008, ed. (2010), The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2013) and The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011 (Cornell University Press, 2013; paperback, 2017), which has a forthcoming sequel on the Obama and Trump administrations, Peace Derailed: Obama, Trump, Biden, and the Decline of Diplomacy on Israel/Palestine, 2011-2022 (co-authored). In addition, Telhami has written numerous articles on international politics and Middle Eastern affairs. He has been a principal investigator in the annual Arab Public Opinion Survey, conducted since 2002 in six Arab countries.

Professor Telhami has also been active in the foreign policy arena. He has advised every U.S. administration from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama. He has served as Advisor to the US Mission to the UN (1990-91), as advisor to former Congressman Lee Hamilton, more recently as senior advisor to George Mitchell, President Obama’s United States Special Envoy for Middle East Peace (2009-2011) and as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which was mandated by the Wye River Agreements and has served as an advisor to the United States Department of State. He also served on the Iraq Study Group as a member of the Strategic Environment Working Group. He has contributed to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times and regularly appears on national and international radio and television. He has served on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, which was appointed by the Department of State at the request of Congress, and he co-drafted the report of their findings, Changing Minds, Winning Peace. He has also co-drafted several Council on Foreign Relations reports on US public diplomacy, on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and on Persian Gulf security.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the board of the Education for Employment Foundation, several academic advisory boards, and has served on the board of Human Rights Watch (and as Chair of Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East). He has also served on the board of the United States Institute of Peace. Professor Telhami was selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York along with the New York Times as one of the "Great Immigrants" for 2013. In 2022 and 2023, he was listed by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the “Most Influential People on Foreign Affairs.” He was the recipient of the Distinguished International Service Award by the University of Maryland in 2002 and the Excellence in Public Service Award by the University System of Maryland Board of Regents in 2006. He is also a recipient of the University of Maryland's Honors College 2014 Outstanding Faculty Award and was selected as a 2018-2019 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.