Matt Trevithick served as the Director of Communications at the American University of Afghanistan from 2010-2014 after working at the American University of Iraq. He is currently the co-founder and Director of Research at the Syria Research and Evaluation Organization in Gaziantep, Turkey. He is also the co-author of An Undesirable Element: An Afghan Memoir, about the life of Afghanistan's first post-Taliban Minister of Higher Education with a foreword written by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Wall St. Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He speaks Dari and has traveled across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mali.