Naval Academy Selects First Minerva Research Fellow

This January, Dr. John
Nagl, current President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in
Washington, D.C.,  will join the Naval Academy History Department as the
academy’s first Minerva Research Fellow as part of the Department of Defense
Minerva Initiative program.  Nagl will concurrently serve at the Naval
Academy and as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CNAS.

The
Minerva Initiative is a DOD-sponsored, university-based social science research
initiative launched by the Secretary of Defense in 2008 focusing on areas of
strategic importance to U.S. national security policy.  The goal of the
Minerva Initiative is to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social,
cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of
strategic importance to the U.S.

“Dr.
Nagl is a well-known and international expert on counterinsurgency, in addition
to being an experienced mentor for junior officers and we’re excited to have
him join us,” said Naval Academy Academic Dean and Provost Andrew T. Phillips.

Beginning
in 2010, the Office of the Secretary of Defense partnered with a range of
defense educational institutions to launch Minerva Research Fellow programs at
select Joint Professional Military Education schools, and expanded the program
in 2011 to also include the three service academies.  Scholars accepted
into Minerva Research Fellow faculty positions must investigate
Minerva-relevant research topics and have a Ph.D. in social sciences or foreign
area studies research, as well as a significant track record of research,
teaching, academic presentation and publication exploring given topic area. The
program is intended to build DoD in-house expertise in the social sciences by
incorporating social science expertise into strategic levels of study and engagement
across the Services and within the Department.

Nagl’s
primary responsibility as the Minerva Chair at the academy will be to
investigate the influences of culture upon warfare.  Each semester he will
also teach one upper level elective course to the midshipmen, such as “the
history of counterinsurgency” which will be offered this spring.  Nagl
will also participate in department faculty research seminars.

“The
history department is delighted that it will add Dr. Nagl, a distinguished
soldier-scholar, to its faculty as the Naval Academy's first Minerva Research
Fellow,” said Naval Academy History Department Chair Richard Abels. “The
midshipmen and the Naval Academy faculty are sure to benefit from his extensive
experience and education.  We are very much looking forward to having him
join us.”

Nagl
is a Class of 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who
served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army for 20 years.  He is currently
the President of the Center for a New American Security, a non-partisan think
tank in Washington D.C.  Nagl is also a member of the Defense Policy
Board, a visiting professor in the War Studies Department at Kings College of
London, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Veterans of
Foreign Wars, and a member of the International Institute of Strategic
Studies.  Nagl has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and the Commission on Wartime Contracting and served on the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review Independent Panel (the Hadley/Perry Commission).  He sits
on the advisory boards of Mission Essential Personnel, the Spirit of America,
and the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute. Nagl is also a member
of the Joint Force Quarterly Advisory Committee, a Young Leader of the French-American
Foundation and the American Council on Germany, and a member of the Diplomatic
Finnish Sauna Society of Washington.     

For more biographical information about Nagl,
visit http://www.cnas.org/nagl.  
For more information about the Minerva Initiative, visit http://minerva.dtic.mil/overview.html.
For more about the Naval Academy, visit www.usna.edu.