Speaker

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States (2025), which Bobby Ghosh reviewing in Foreign Policy termed “the most important book on U.S. civil-military relations to appear in a generation.” She is the author of six books, including Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony (2017), and is the editor, with Jim Mattis, of Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military (2016). Previously, she was the deputy director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. During the 2025-2026 academic year she held the Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. Dr. Schake has had a distinguished career in government, working in the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and the National Security Council staff. She has taught at Stanford University, the US Military Academy at West Point, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Dr. Schake is the reviewer of military books for Foreign Affairs, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a board member of Protect Democracy, Spirit of America, the Military Writers Guild, and the Centre for European Reform. She has previously been a member of the Defense Policy Board, the State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Documentation, and the Department of Defense Naming Commission. Dr. Schake holds a PhD and two master’s degrees from the University of Maryland and a BA from Stanford.