A Conversation with H.R.H. Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud
on regional and global relations; state and non-state actors; leadership, stability and peace; and education
Reception to follow in the Shultz Dining Room
H.R.H. Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud is a founder and trustee of the King Faisal Foundation, as well as the Chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies. He is also a Trustee of the Oxford Islamic Center at Oxford University and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) at Georgetown University. H.R.H. has been co-chair of the C100 Group, affiliated with the World Economic Forum since 2003. He delivered the keynote at the National Council on the U.S.-Arab Relations 40th Anniversary Commemoration in 2023. H.R.H. is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Munich Security Conference.
H.R.H. Prince Turki al Faisal was former Ambassador to the United States of America from 2005-2007. Before that, he was Ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s in London and to the Republic of Ireland. From 1977 to 2001, he served as the Director General of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), the Kingdom’s main foreign intelligence service. He was appointed an Advisor in the Royal Court in 1973.
Prince Turki graduated from The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in 1963, and pursued an undergraduate degree at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Prince Turki received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Ulster in Ireland, and an honorary PhD in international politics from the University of Hankuk in Korea. He is married to H.R.H. Princess Nouf bint Fahd and has six children and several grandchildren. His son Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki al Saud currently serves as the Kingdom’s Minister of Sports. H.R.H. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and H.R.H. Princess Effat bint Mohammad al Thunayan are the parents of Prince Turki al Faisal. His mother, ‘Queen Iffat’ initiated Saudi Arabia’s first private school for women in 1955 and founded the first college for girls in Riyadh in 1960. In 1999, she established Effat University, Saudi Arabia’s first private, non-profit women’s college.
Dr. Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, D.Laws, is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University (LISD) and the founding chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium, LCM, an independent & private diplomacy forum. He is the co-founder of LISD’s Program on Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations (PORDIR).
H.R.H. Prince Turki Al Faisal has been involved in PORDIR since 2007 and has also been a regular participant in seminars and colloquia of the LISD Project on Afghanistan and the Region. Prince Turki published The Afghanistan File (together with Michael Field).
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.