O’Sullivan Appointed Professor

Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan Meghan L. O’Sullivan has been appointed the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School, the school announced this week.

O’Sullivan, an expert on Middle Eastern politics who served as a special assistant to president George W. Bush and helped implement the Bush administration’s surge strategy in the Iraq war, has been appointed as a professor of practice. The five-year renewable professorship generally is given to those with extensive political or diplomatic experience outside of academics.

“Meghan brings a combination of a really rare intelligence with practical, on the ground experience,” said Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood ’75. “What we are trying to do at the Kennedy School is to combine the world of scholarship with the world of practice, and Meghan bridges that boundary beautifully.”

The school has also recently added two other professors of practice with international diplomacy expertise, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO R. Nicholas Burns as well as British diplomat Rory Stewart.

Ellwood also said that O’Sullivan’s

field of expertise is particularly important for the Kennedy School, as “this is an incredibly important time in the Middle East and South Asia.”

Last spring the school hosted Gen. David H. Petraeus, a friend of O’Sullivan’s who was also instrumental in developing the troop surge in Iraq.

O’Sullivan has spent time working on both Middle Eastern and South Asian issues, leading strategic policy reviews in Afghanistan and Iraq and serving as the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Strategic Planning for Southwest Asia.

Ellwood also lauded O’Sullivan for being well-liked among Kennedy School students.

The Middle East expert is currently teaching “Geopolitics of Energy” and “Decision Making in Recent Crises: The Formulation and Consequences of Key Decisions on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

A graduate of Georgetown and Oxford, O’Sullivan previously worked in academia as an adjunct professor at Georgetown while serving as a fellow at the Brookings Institute from 1998-2001.

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.