New faculty members!

Fletcher is not a huge place, and a year when we add four new faculty members is noteworthy.  I can’t do a better job of describing this process and its results than our academic dean, Steven Block, did, and I’m simply going to share the message he sent to the community.

I’m pleased to announce the addition for four new faculty at Fletcher.

Many of you will already have met Monica Toft, who joined us this semester as a Professor of International Politics.  Monica comes to Fletcher from the University of Oxford, where she was Professor of Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government.  She has also been a Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.  Since receiving her PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, she has published widely in the areas of ethnic conflict, civil war, and the politics of religion.  In addition to numerous papers in top journals, Monica’s recent books include:  God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, and Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars.  In addition to her research and teaching in these areas, Monica is establishing and directing the School’s new Center for Strategic Studies.

We have also successfully concluded three faculty searches, the results of which are as follows:

International Criminal and Humanitarian Law

Our new law professor is Tom Dannenbaum.  Tom is currently Lecturer in Human Rights and Director of the MA in Human Rights at University College London.  He has also been a Visiting Lecturer and Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School, where he received his JD in 2010.  In addition, Tom earned his PhD in Politics from Princeton in 2014.  He has published numerous papers in international law journals, and Tom’s book, Why Aggression is a Crime and Why It Matters, is forthcoming on Cambridge University Press in 2017.

Cybersecurity

Susan Landau joins both The Fletcher School and the Tufts Computer Science Department as a bridge professor of cybersecurity.  Susan has extensive experience in both academia and industry as a cybersecurity policy specialist.  She joins us from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she is Professor of Cybersecurity Policy, and from University College London, where she is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science.  Susan has also been a Visiting Scholar in Computer Science at Harvard, and a senior engineer at both Sun Microsystems and Google.  She received her PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and is widely recognized as a leading expert and prize-winning scholar in the area of cybersecurity policy.  Her books include Surveillance or Security?  The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies and Privacy on the Line: the Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption.

History of U.S. Foreign Relations

While we can never truly replace Alan Henrikson, we’ve hired Chris Miller to take on the tradition of teaching the history of U.S. foreign relations in Alan’s place.  Chris joins us from Yale University, where he completed his PhD in History in 2015 and then stayed on as Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.  Chris’s research focuses on the Russian economy and foreign relations.  His first book, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy, was published in 2016; his second book, Putinomics: The Price of Power in Russia.  Russia’s Economy from 1999-present, is forthcoming.  I was pleased recently to be able to introduce Chris to Alan, and capture this symbolic passing of the torch.

Credit for the success of these searches goes to Dan Drezner for chairing the history search, Ian Johnstone for chairing the law search, and to Michele Malvesti and Michael Klein for representing Fletcher on the joint cybersecurity search committee.

Cheers,
Steve