Hassan Abbas is a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. He is also a doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  His research interests are Pakistan's nuclear program and the Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan controversy; religious extremism in South and Central Asia, and “Islam and the West."

He has an LL.M. in International Law from Nottingham University, UK, where he was a Britannia Chevening Scholar (1999). He also remained a visiting fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School (2002–2003) and later continued at the Program on Negotiation at HLS as a visiting scholar (2003–2004).

He is a former Pakistani government official who served in the administrations of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1995–1996) and President Pervez Musharraf (1999–2000). His latest book, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror  (M.E. Sharpe) has been on bestseller lists in India and Pakistan and widely reviewed internationally including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Far Eastern Economic Review, The Hindu, Dawn, etc. He has also appeared as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, and as a political commentator on VOA and BBC. His forthcoming book is titled: "Sovereignty Belongs to Allah": Constitutionalism and Human Rights in the Islamic States. He runs Watandost, which is a blog on Pakistan-related affairs. He currently serves as Policy Advisor and member of the Think Tank Committee of Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee