Ali Riaz

Ali Riaz is a Bangladeshi American political scientist and writer. He served as the Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser. He was the Vice Chairman of National Consensus Commission and Head of Constitutional Reform Commission. He is a Distinguished Professor at Illinois State University where he joined in 2002. Most of his work deals with religion and politics, particularly on South Asian politics and political Islam. He has written extensively on Bangladeshi politics and madrasas in South Asia. He was the editor of Studies on Asia, a bi-annual journal of the Midwestern Conference on Asian Affairs (2010–2015).

In 2024, Riaz was tasked by the Interim government of Bangladesh to head a commission on constitutional reform after the end of the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina's authoritarian regime.