I’m humbled and thrilled to be the new director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For the past 11 years, FSI has thrived under the leadership of Professor Mike McFaul, cementing the institute’s reputation as a leading interdisciplinary hub for cutting-edge, policy-relevant research and teaching about the world. To say the least, Mike has left incredibly big shoes to fill.

FSI’s mission to produce world-class scholarship, prepare future leaders, and inform policymakers to address critical global issues is something I’ve devoted my entire professional life to pursuing—and that mission is more important than ever. Our current era is marked by resurgent geopolitical rivalry among major powers, world-changing advances in technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, catastrophic risks associated with climate change and other transnational dangers, and growing challenges to global democracy. There is no place on the planet better positioned to help understand and navigate this era than FSI.

This global inflection point is not my first. Indeed, my entire career has been shaped by a series of inflection points calling out for policy-relevant scholarship. I started college as a political science major at the University of Michigan as the Berlin Wall fell. I pursued a Ph.D. in international relations at Columbia University in the 1990s as the field was grappling with how to understand the post-Cold War world. And I began my first teaching job as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota shortly before 9/11.

Like all Americans, I was deeply affected by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and, like many, I was inspired to pursue public service. As a result, I’ve spent most of the past two decades toggling between academia and government. In 2005, I was awarded a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship that placed me in the Stability Operations Office at the Pentagon for more than a year during George W. Bush’s presidency. I then briefly returned to the University of Minnesota before taking a job in the Security Studies program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. I spent the first three years of the Obama administration as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, working for Secretary Robert Gates, and the last two years of the administration at the White House as then-Vice President Biden’s national security advisor. In between I was back in the classroom at Georgetown.

In 2018, I came to FSI as the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow and served as co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Then, in 2021, I re-entered government as the under secretary of defense for policy—before returning to the Farm in the fall of 2023.

Across my stints in government, I’ve worked on some of the thorniest issues of our time: counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; constraining Iran’s nuclear program; responding to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022; managing rising U.S.-China tensions over trade, technology, Taiwan, and the South China Sea; and adapting to the threats to strategic stability posed by rising nuclear arsenals and emerging technologies like cyber, space, and AI.

Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most prominent scholar-practitioner of all time, famously observed in the first volume of his memoirs that, “High office teaches decision-making, not substance.…On the whole, a period in high office consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.” Kissinger was brilliant, but in my experience, the reverse has been true: my time in government has consistently enhanced my intellectual capital, deeply enriching my research and teaching.

My first book, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife, examined the causes of civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries—insights I brought with me to my first job at the Pentagon. That experience, in turn, directly informed my research examining the evolution of U.S. counterinsurgency practices in the context of the Global War on Terrorism. From there, my time as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East informed my later work on nuclear proliferation risks in the Middle East. My time at the White House widened my aperture further, contributing to my understanding of the negative synergy between transnational threats and great power competition—the subject of my second book (co-authored with Tom Wright), Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order. And my current research examining the geopolitical implications of emerging technologies, especially AI, is directly informed by the transformation in technology and U.S.-China competition I confronted during my most recent tenure at the Pentagon.

In other words, each turn of my personal intellectual ratchet was directly informed by the policy work that proceeded it, driving home the need for rigorous scholarship to inform policymaking—and vice versa.

That synergy is what makes FSI, and Stanford, so unique. I am especially excited to deepen the connections between FSI’s policy experts, other Stanford research institutes, and the university’s seven world-class schools. To effectively tackle the challenges posed by intensifying global competition, emerging technologies, environmental stress, and threats to democracy we must build stronger bridges between technologists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers—connecting Silicon Valley and Washington. Most of all, I am eager to engage with Stanford’s incredible students, who will be the leaders navigating the turbulent waters of our current era.

My time in government—especially at the Pentagon—also taught me another important lesson: the imperative to lead nonpartisan organizations in a nonpartisan manner. During my two stints as a senior political official at the Department of Defense, I never asked or cared whether the military personnel, civil servants, and contractors working with me or for me were Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or something else. It didn’t matter. They were all patriots—and the only things that mattered to me were their subject matter expertise, their judgement, their basic human decency, and their commitment to the mission of keeping the United States safe. As a manager and senior leader in the Department, it was similarly my responsibility to put politics aside in favor of the national interest and the health of the organization. I will bring that same spirit to managing FSI, where our responsibility is to produce rigorous scholarship, educate the next generation of leaders, and provide nonpartisan policy advice to help make the world a better place, regardless of who is in power.