Professor Gilles Kepel, Research Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Professor at Sciences Po, Paris, met with centre researchers on 1 March 2012 to discuss events in the Arab region. A well-known scholar on political Islam and Arab affairs, and author of many books, including most recently, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. Professor Kepel engaged in a discussion of problematic intellectual and regional political issues with the Centre's Arab specialists, and sought to deepen his understanding of the functioning of the Al Jazeera Network and its various institutions. The conversation focused on the role al Jazeera played in the Arab revolutions and its coverage of events in Bahrain in 2011. This provoked a lively debate on the neutrality of al Jazeera's reporting on the region's recent upheavals.