Strategic Studies | Faculty

Eliot A. Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University and founding director of the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies there.   As of May 1, 2007, Professor Cohen is on leave of absence to the State Department serving as Counselor of the Department.  A graduate of Harvard College, he received his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard in 1982.   He subsequently taught there and at the Naval War College (Department of Strategy).  After serving on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Dr. Cohen came to SAIS in 1990.   He has written books and articles on a variety of military and national security-related subjects, including, most recently Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (Free Press, 2002).  He has written or co-authored other books including Military Misfortunes:  The Anatomy of Failure in War, and directed the US Air Force’s official multi-volume study of the Gulf War, the Gulf War Air Power Survey.  He has an extensive background in executive education, to include programs for general officers in the American armed forces and senior executives in the private sector.  He has served as an intelligence officer in the United States Army Reserve, and as a member of the Defense Policy Advisory Board of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Thomas Keaney is the acting director of the Merrill Center. Previously, he was a professor of military strategy at National War College, Washington DC, and director of its core courses on military thought and strategy. A retired colonel in the Air Force, among recent publications are Revolution in Warfare?: Air Power in the Persian Gulf (with Eliot A. Cohen); US Allies in a Changing World (ed. with Barry Rubin); Armed Forces in the Middle East, Politics and Strategy (ed., 2002); War in Iraq: Planning and Operations (ed. with Thomas Mahnken) . He received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. Dr. Keaney teaches courses on European security and the American military.  

Mark F. Cancian is Chief of the Force Structure and Investment Branch at the Office of Management and Budget.  He received his B.A. in History from Harvard College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.  Previously he served on various weapons acquisition and analysis staffs in the Pentagon, and as assistant staff director of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces.  During a period out of government he ran research and executive education programs as the Assistant Director, National Security Programs, Kennedy School of Government. He also served 34 years (active and reserve) as an infantry and artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps including service in Iraq (two tours), Desert Storm and the evacuation of Vietnam. He is the author of numerous articles on military strategy, history, weapons acquisition, and force structure.

Brady Cusick earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Boston University in 2005, with a focus on political and psychological anthropology, civil society, and Japan.   He was a visiting researcher at Osaka University from 2002–2003 while doing dissertation fieldwork on Japanese civil society and voluntary organizations.  This research was funded by a National Security Education Program's David Boren Graduate Fellowship and an earlier language fellowship from the Japan Foundation.  While a graduate student, he taught several courses in cultural anthropology at Boston University and was a lecturer on Japanese culture at MIT.  He also served as a teaching assistant in Harvard University's Core Curriculum and was awarded a certificate of distinction in teaching by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.  Since 2004, he has worked to provide cultural perspectives to a variety of government and military agencies.

Thomas Ehrhard is Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.  Prior to his retirement from the Air Force in 2006, Colonel Ehrhard served as the military assistant to Andrew W. Marshall, the Secretary of Defense’s Principle Advisor for Net Assessment. During his 26 years active service, Ehrhard worked in key Air Staff assignments in the Pentagon, including one as chief of the “Skunk Works” (Strategy, Concepts, & Doctrine Division) and as a division chief on the Air Force’s 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review staff. He earned his Ph.D. in international relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS, where he researched the development and integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the US armed forces, the intelligence community, and Israel.  Dr. Ehrhard has previously taught at the Air Force's School for Advanced Air and Space Studies and the Air Force Academy, and has lectured at Georgetown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  His recent published works include “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States Armed Services: A Comparative Study of Weapon System Innovation,” (Johns Hopkins SAIS) and “Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework,” (Air University)

Thomas E. Griffith, Jr. is the Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs at the National War College, Fort McNair, DC.  He is responsible for educating future leaders of the armed forces, Department of State, and other civilian agencies for high-level policy, command, and staff responsibilities. Previously, he headed the US Air Force’s elite school for strategists, the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.  He has been a group commander, has over 2,000 hours of flying time in the F-4 and the F-15E, and was a special assistant to the Air Force chief of staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He flew in the initial air strikes of Operation Desert Storm and was later captured and held as a prisoner of war.  After repatriation and recovery he attended the University of North Carolina and earned a doctoral degree in history.  He has published articles on variety of topics including, targeting strategies, the use of airpower in Afghanistan, and military innovation.  He is the author of MacArthur’s Airman: General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific.

Mary R. Habeck is an Associate Professor in Strategic Studies.  As of December 1, 2007, Professor Habeck is on leave of absence to the National Security Council staff.  She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and was an associate professor at Yale for eleven years prior to joining the team at SAIS.  Dr. Habeck also coordinated the Yale Russian Archive Project to facilitate access to documents in the former Soviet archives.  She is the recipient of the 2001-02 Morse Fellowship and has numerous publications.  Her latest work is on jihadism and her book Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror was published by Yale Press in November 2005.  Dr. Habeck is an expert on military history, strategic thought, radical Islam and the war on terror.

Andrew Hoehn is currently the Director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program as part of Project Air Force, a division of the RAND Corporation.  In this capacity, he is responsible for overseeing studies and providing advice to senior Air Force leaders on geopolitical changes, shifts in the conduct of warfare, strategy and doctrine, and new environments for aerospace operations.  Mr. Hoehn previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy from 1998-2004, receiving the Distinguished Civilian Service Award for his acomplishments. He has also held various positions within the Office of the Secretary of Defense dealing with Strategy, Policy and Threat Reduction.  Mr. Hoehn received his Masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public and International Affairs, focusing on international security policy and political  economy, and has written numerous articles in professional military journals, monographs, and books.

Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist by training, has spent the past few years trying to convince the Department of Defense that cultural knowledge should be a national security priority.  Dr. McFate is currently a research staff member in the Joint Warfighting Analysis Program at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, VA.  Formerly, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science Defense Policy Fellow at the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research, where she worked on a project concerning Iraq’s cultural terrain for the Joint IED Task Force, among other projects. She was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award by the Secretary of the Navy for her work at ONR.  Before coming to ONR, Dr. McFate was a social scientist in RAND’s Intelligence Policy Center, where her research focused primarily on North Korean culture and society.  Dr. McFate received a B.A. from University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Yale University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.  Her Ph.D. dissertation concerned British counterinsurgency policy and operations in Northern Ireland.  As an anthropologist, Dr. McFate has conducted ethnographic field research in Syria, Northern Ireland, England, South Korea, and with Islamic communities in Germany. Dr. McFate’s legal background includes a clinical internship on the United States Attorney's Office Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Squad, and experience as a litigation associate at the law firm of Baker & McKenzie in San Francisco, CA.  She has published in such journals as Journal of Conflict Studies, Harvard Journal of International Law, Peace and Conflict Studies, Military Review and Joint Forces Quarterly.  She is a native of Marin County, CA where she grew up on a WWII naval ammunition barge that had been converted into a houseboat.

John E. McLaughlin is Professorial Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow of Strategic Studies of the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies.  Mr. McLaughlin, who recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, will present seminars on intelligence and policy, participate in strategic studies courses involving intelligence analysis, in general join in Merrill Center activities.  He will be available to consult with students who wish to learn more about the intelligence career field.  Mr. McLaughlin had served in the Central Intelligence Agency since 1972.  In that time, he was a member of the Directorate of Intelligence on European, Russian, and Eurasian affairs, served a tour in the state Department, and founded the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, an institution dedicated to teaching the history, mission, and essential skills of the analytic profession to new CIA employees.  He had been the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence since 2000, during which time he represented the Intelligence Community at meetings of the National Security Council Deputies Committee, in briefings with the President, and at hearings on Capitol Hill.  He served as Acting Director of Central Intelligence from July to September 2004.  Mr. McLaughlin is a SAIS graduate with a specialty in European Affairs, studying both in Washington and at the Bologna campus.

Other SAIS faculty, including Professors Ruth Wedgwood, Kent Calder, Peter Bergen, William Wise, Ashley Tellis, Justin Vaisse, Herbet Okun, and Ben Ougrham teach courses related to Strategic Studies in areas including international law, terrorism in South Asia, European security, WMD in Russia, and the politics of forward deployment.