Beth Akers is a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families and a Fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy. She is an expert on the economics of education, with a focus on higher education policy.

Akers’s recent writing has been on the topics of student loan debt, information in higher education and extended time-to-degree. She previously held the position of staff economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, where she worked on federal student lending policy as well as other education and labor issues. Akers received a B.S. in Mathematics and Economics from SUNY Albany and a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. She is often cited by major media outlets and has briefed policy makers on the topic of student loans.

John R. Allen is a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general and former commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Prior to joining Brookings as senior fellow and co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Allen served as special presidential envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIL, a position he held for 14 months. Immediately following retirement from the Marine Corps, Allen was the senior advisor to the secretary of defense on Middle East Security, and in that role he led the security dialogue with Israel and the Palestinian Authority for 15 months within the Middle East peace process.

Allen commanded the NATO International Security Assistance Force and United States Forces in Afghanistan from July 2011 to February 2013. Allen’s command of the 150,000 U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan occurred at a particularly critical period in the war. During his command, he recovered the 33,000 U.S. surge forces, moved the Afghan National Security Forces into the lead for combat operations, and pivoted NATO forces from being a conventional combat force into an advisory command. Further, he established the division size Special Operations Joint Task Force. In the process, his forces closed or realigned over 500 bases and facilities. All of these activities were conducted in contact with the enemy and during active and particularly intense combat operations.

During his nearly 38-year military career, Allen served in a variety of command and staff positions in the Marine Corps and the Joint Force. Prior to assuming command of the NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Allen commanded at every level in the Marine Corps through the Marine Expeditionary Brigade. He served as the G-3 operations officer of the 2nd Marine Division. He was the aide de camp and military secretary to the 31st commandant of the Marine Corps.

As a general officer, Allen served as the principal director of Asia-Pacific policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a position he held for nearly three years. In this assignment, he was involved extensively on policy initiatives involving Mongolia, China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. He was also involved in the Six Party Talks on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He played a major role in organizing the relief effort during the South Asian tsunami from 2004 to 2005. Allen’s contingency and combat operations assignments included Operation Sea Signal in the Caribbean in 1994, Operation Joint Endeavor in the Balkans from 1995 to 1996, Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq from 2007 to 2008, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013.

Beyond his operational credentials, Allen has also led a number of professional military educational programs including service as the director of the Marine Infantry Officer Program; commanding officer of the Marine Corps Basic School; and commandant of midshipmen in the United States Naval Academy. He has served as the Marine Corps fellow to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a commandant of the Marine Corps fellow, and was the first Marine officer to serve as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He remains a permanent and active member of the Council. Allen holds a Bachelor of Science in operations analysis from the U.S. Naval Academy, a master’s degree in national security studies from Georgetown University, a Master of Science in strategic intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College, and a Master of Science in national security strategy from the National Defense University.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa.

Felbab-Brown is the author of “Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan” (Brookings Institution Press, 2012) and “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs” (Brookings Institution Press, 2010) which examines military conflict and illegal economies in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan, Burma, Northern Ireland, India, and Turkey. She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on these issues.

Among her recent publications are: "No Easy Exit: Drugs and Counternarcotics Policies in Afghanistan" (forthcoming); "Beyond Counterterrorism: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Measures to Combat Wildlife Trafficking" (forthcoming); "US-Mexico Summit: From Empathy to Security Cooperation Specifics" (Brookings, 2015); "Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball? Peña Nieto’s Security Policy and Organized Crime in Mexico" (Brookings, 2014); "Small Steps to Save Our Gains in Afghanistan" (The Washington Post, 2014) (co-authored); "Security Considerations for Conducting Fieldwork in Highly Dangerous Places or on Highly Dangerous Topics" (Social Science Research Council, 2014); "Improving Supply Side Policies: Smarter Eradication, Interdiction, and Alternative Livelihoods and the Possibility of Licensing" (London School of Economics, 2014); "Security and Political Developments in Afghanistan in 2014 and Beyond: Endgame or New Game?" (Vienna: Government of Austria, 2014); "Obama’s State of the Union Speech and the Seductiveness of Limited Intervention" (Brookings, 2014); "The Not-so-Jolly Roger: Dealing with Piracy off The Coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Guinea?" (Brookings, 2014); "The Purpose of Law Enforcement Is to Make Good Criminals? How to Effectively Respond to the Crime-Terrorism Nexus" (Potomac Institute of Policy Studies, 2013); "Despite Its Siren Song, High-Value Targeting Doesn’t Fit All: Matching Interdiction Patterns to Specific Narcoterrorism and Organized-Crime Contexts" (Brookings, 2013); "Afghanistan After ISAF" (Harvard International Review, 2013); "A State-Building Approach to the Drug Trade Problem" (UN Chronicle, 2013); "The Political Games in the Taliban Negotiations" (Brookings, 2013); "Crime-War Battlefields" (Survival, May 2013); "The Orangutan’s Road: Illegal Logging and Mining in Indonesia" (Brookings, 2013); "Crime as Mirror of Politics: Urban Gangs in Indonesia" (Brookings, 2013); "Peña Nieto’s Piñata: The Promise and Pitfalls of Mexico’s New Security Policy against Organized Crime" (Brookings, 2013); "Political Violence and the Illicit Economies of West Africa" (Terrorism and Political Violence, 2012); "Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America" (Brookings 2011); "Not as Easy as Falling off a Log: The Illegal Timber Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region and Possible Mitigation Strategies" (Brookings, 2011); "The Disappearing Act: The Illicit Trade in Wildlife in Asia" (Brookings, 2011); and "The Political Economy of Illegal Domains in India and China" (International Lawyer, Winter 2009).

Felbab-Brown received her doctorate in political science from MIT and her bachelor’s from Harvard University.

William H. Frey is an internationally regarded demographer, known for his research on urban populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics and his expertise on the U.S. Census. His latest book is "Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America."

Frey’s demographic expertise draws from his nearly three decades at the University of Michigan where he is on the faculty of the University’s Institute for Social Research and Population Studies Center. He has authored over 200 publications and several books including Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the U.S. (Russell Sage, 1988, with Alden Speare, Jr.); America By the Numbers: A Fieldguide to the U.S. Population (The New Press, 2001 with Bill Abresch and Jonathan Yeasting), and Social Atlas of the United States (Allyn and Bacon, 2008 with Amy Beth Anspach and John Paul DeWitt).

At Michigan, he has directed projects with the National Science Foundation, NICHD Center for Population Research, and several foundations. He has contributed to the 1995 President’s National Urban Policy Report, to HUD’s State of the Cities 2000 report, and to the Russell Sage Foundation’s Census research series. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a contributing editor to American Demographics magazine.

Frey has also been active in creating demographic media for use by educators, policy makers and the general public. Examples are the websites: Frey Demographer, Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN) and CensusScope.

Frey received a Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University in 1974. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria); the Andrew W. Mellon, Research Scholar at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., and the Hewlett Visiting Scholar at Child Trends in Washington, D.C. He previously held positions at Rutgers University, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the State University of New York at Albany. He is a member of the Population Association of America, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the American Sociological Association, and is a past Fellow of the Urban Land Institute.

Frey is also known for his ability to communicate demographic trends to general and policy audiences. His research has been written about in such diverse venues as The Economist, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The National Journal, The New Yorker and Forbes. His commentary and observations have been featured on broadcast media including NPR’s All Things Considered , PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, NBC’s Nightly News, ABC’s World News, CBS’s Evening News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and print media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

She is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Toward an Economy of Well-Being (Brookings, 2011; published in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and paperback); Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (Oxford University Press, 2009; published in Chinese, Portuguese and paperback); Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies (with Stefano Pettinato, Brookings, 2002; published in Spanish); Private Markets for Public Goods: Raising the Stakes in Economic Reform (Brookings, 1998); Safety Nets, Politics and the Poor: Transitions to Market Economies (Brookings, 1994);Peru's APRA (Lynne Rienner, 1992); Improving the Odds: Political Strategies for Institutional Reform in Latin America (co-author, IDB, 1999); and A Half Penny on the Dollar: The Future of Development Aid, with Michael O'Hanlon (Brookings, 1997). She is the editor, with Eduardo Lora, of Paradox and Perceptions: Quality of Life in Latin America (Brookings, 2009); with Susan Collins, of the Brookings Trade Forum 2004: Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality (Brookings, 2006); and, with Nancy Birdsall, of New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World (Brookings, 1999), and Beyond Trade-Offs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America (Brookings/IDB, 1988). She is the author of articles in journals including the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the World Bank Research Observer, Health Affairs, Health Economics, the Journal of Socio-Economics, World Economics, Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Development Studies, the Journal of Latin American Studies, World Development, the Journal of Happiness Studies, and of numerous chapters in edited volumes, including the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. She is an associate editor at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and on the editorial boards of numerous other economic journals. She served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on well-being metrics and policy in 2012-13, and received a research scholar of the year award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies for 2014.

Graham served as Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at Brookings from 2002-2004. She has also served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. She has been a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, and the Harvard Institute for International Development, helping to design safety net programs in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. She has testified in Congress several times and has appeared on NBC News, National Public Radio, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and CNN among others. Graham has also written in the Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times and the Washington Post. Reviews of her work on well-being have appeared in Science, The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Financial Times, among others. Her research has received support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Tinker and Hewlett Foundations. She was awarded a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship for 1997-98, during which time she served as Special Adviser to the Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank. Graham, born in Lima, Peru, has an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University. She is the mother of three children.

Jeffrey Gutman is currently a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, focusing on issues of development effectiveness, infrastructure and urban development. He retired from the World Bank in 2010 after a 31-year career where he had extensive strategic, managerial and operational responsibilities covering economic development and poverty alleviation across a range of sectors and regions of the world.

As vice president of Operational Policy and Country Services from 2007-2010, he led the efforts for major reforms of World Bank's operational policies and practices. Serving at the intersection of senior management, the board, and with key interactions with donor and client countries, Gutman's efforts focused on balancing a demand for faster response and a more differentiated approach by type of country and sector with the calls for greater transparency, accountability and attention to results. During this period, he and his team guided a program to overhaul investment lending policies, including those for fragile states; managed the design and adoption of a major reform of disclosure policy; and led the effort to adopt and implement the recommendations of the Volcker Panel report on fraud and corruption.

From the time he joined the World Bank in 1979, he has held a range of technical, policy and managerial positions, relating to infrastructure and urban development. Throughout his career, Gutman remained focused on operations with a reputation for innovation and quality both in substance and in practicality in design.

Prior to joining the Bank, Gutman worked as an economist/planner for a consulting firm including a three-year assignment in Honduras; as a consultant to the U.S. Congress National Transportation Policy Study Commission; and as a legislative aide to a New York congressman. He received his master's degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University in 1974 and his bachelor of science in industrial and labor relations form Cornell University in 1971. He has lectured extensively at international fora and in college graduate programs.

Dr. Michael Hansen is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy. A labor economist by training, he has conducted original research on the teacher quality, value-added measurement, teacher evaluation, and teacher responses to incentives and accountability using state longitudinal data systems. Other areas of research include school turnaround and STEM learning.

Findings from Dr. Hansen’s research have received media coverage from prominent outlets including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Education Week. His work has also been published in peer-reviewed research journals including American Economic Review, Education Finance and Policy, Economica, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, among others. Dr. Hansen has worked as Principal Investigator or co-PI on a range of contracts and grants with a variety of funders, including the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and Teach For America. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Washington.

John Hudak is deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies. His research examines questions of presidential power in the contexts of administration, personnel, and public policy. Additionally, he focuses on campaigns and elections, legislative-executive interaction, and state and federal marijuana policy.

John’s book, Presidential Pork: White House Influence over the Distribution of Federal Grants demonstrates that pork-barrel politics occurs beyond the halls of Congress. Presidents capitalize on their discretionary funding authority to target federal dollars to swing states in advance of presidential elections. His other work explores how agency staffing, expertise, and institutional structure facilitate or hinder presidential power and influence. This research explores the balance between political control and bureaucratic expertise in the delivery of public policy.

John’s work has been recognized for its quality and contribution by the Midwest Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association’s Presidency Research Group. His work has been supported by institutions including the National Science Foundation.

Prior to joining Brookings, John served as the program director and as a graduate fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He holds a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Meltzer is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies where he teaches international trade law. Meltzer is a reviewer for the Journal of Politics and Law.

At Brookings, Meltzer works on international trade law and policy issues with a focus on the World Trade Organization and large free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Specific areas of focus include digital trade and trade and climate change. Meltzer also works on financing for sustainable infrastructure. Meltzer has testified on trade issues before the U.S. Congress, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the European Parliament.

Prior to joining Brookings, Meltzer was posted as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. where he was responsible for trade, climate and energy issues and prior to that he was a trade negotiator in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Meltzer has appeared in print and news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg, The Asahi Shimbun, The Economist, and China Daily. Meltzer holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School in Anne Arbor and law and commerce degrees from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Adele Morris is a senior fellow and policy director for Climate and Energy Economics at the Brookings Institution. Her expertise and interests include the economics of policies related to climate change, energy, natural resources, and public finance.

She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress, where she spent a year as a Senior Economist covering energy and climate issues.

Before the JEC, Adele served nine years with the U.S. Treasury Department as its chief natural resource economist, working on climate, energy, agriculture, and radio spectrum issues. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she was the lead U.S. negotiator on land use and forestry issues in the international climate change treaty process. Prior to joining the Treasury, she served as the senior economist for environmental affairs at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. She began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she conducted regulatory oversight of agriculture and natural resource agencies. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Utah, and a B.A. from Rice University.

Ted Piccone is a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy and Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. His research is focused on global democracy and human rights policies; U.S.-Latin American relations, including Cuba; emerging powers; and multilateral affairs. Previously, he served as the acting vice president and director from 2013 to 2014 and deputy director from 2008 to 2013 of the Foreign Policy program. Piccone is the author of "Five Rising Democracies and the Fate of the International Liberal Order"(Brookings Institution Press, 2016).

Piccone served eight years as a senior foreign policy advisor in the Clinton administration, including on the National Security Council staff, at the State Department's Office of Policy Planning and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. From 2001 to 2008, Piccone was the executive director and co-founder of the Democracy Coalition Project, a research and advocacy organization working to promote international cooperation for democracy and human rights globally. He was also the Washington office director for the Club of Madrid, an association of over 100 former heads of state and government engaged in efforts to strengthen democracy around the world, and continues as an advisor. Piccone served as counsel for the United Nations Truth Commission in El Salvador from 1992 to 1993, and as press secretary to U.S. Representative Bob Edgar from 1985 to 1987. His book, "Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights" (Brookings Institution Press, 2012), analyzes the effectiveness of this system at the national level and recommends ways to strengthen it. His research currently focuses on the evolving role of five rising democracies in the global democracy and human rights order. He is an adjunct professor at the American University Washington College of Law.

Piccone received a law degree from Columbia University, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and The Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, and a bachelor's in history magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.

Steven Pifer is director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He focuses on arms control, Russia, and Ukraine. He has offered commentary regarding these issues on CNN, Fox News, CNBC, BBC, National Public Radio, and VOA, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The National Interest, Financial Times, Moscow Times, and Kyiv Post, among others.

A retired foreign service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine from 2001 to 2004, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia on the National Security Council from 1996 to 1997. In addition to Ukraine, he served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow, and London, as well as with the U.S. delegation to the negotiation on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva.

Pifer is co-author of "The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms" (Brookings Institution Press, October 2012). His other publications include “Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention?” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #8 (May 2012); “Ukraine’s Perilous Balancing Act,” Current History (March 2012); “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #7 (July 2011); “The Next Round: The United States and Nuclear Arms Reductions After New START,” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #4 (November 2010); “Ukraine’s Geopolitical Choice, 2009,” Eurasian Geography and Economics (July 2009); “Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009,” Brookings paper (January 2009).

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, policy director of the Center on Children and Families, and editor-in-chief of the Social Mobility Memos blog. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and family change. Prior to joining Brookings, he was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister.

Richard’s publications for Brookings include Saving Horatio Alger: Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream (2014), Character and Opportunity (2014), The Glass Floor (2013), and The Parenting Gap (2014). He is also a contributor to The Atlantic, National Affairs, Democracy Journal, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Richard is the author of John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.

His previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; director of futures at the Work Foundation; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year.

Richard earned a BA from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Warwick University. With co-author Isabel V. Sawhill, he was recipient of the “Best Policy Paper” 2014 ranking in the University of Pennsylvania’s annual Think Tank Awards.

Molly Reynolds is a fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. She studies Congress, with an emphasis on how congressional rules and procedure affect domestic policy outcomes.

Her current research explores exceptions to the filibuster rule for particular measures in the U.S. Senate, such as the procedures for considering the yearly budget resolution, trade agreements, and plans for closing military bases. She finds that these special rules are created and used when doing so is in the current political interest of the Senate's majority party. In addition, she studies the congressional budget process, including the use and consequences of filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bills. Other projects also include work on the role of issue advertising in legislative politics, especially health policy, and on how individual senators use obstructive tactics to gain political benefits from the legislative process.

Reynolds received her Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan and her A.B. in government from Smith College, and previously served as a senior research coordinator in the Governance Studies program at Brookings.

Devashree Saha is a senior policy associate and associate fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of clean energy and economic development policy, including the transition to a clean energy economy. Prior to joining Brookings, Saha worked at the National Governors Association, where her work spanned clean energy, transportation, and land use planning issues. She holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s in political science from Purdue University.

Richard Shearer is a senior research analyst and senior project manager at the Metropolitan Policy Program working on detailed market assessments of metropolitan economies and their component businesses and institutions. Prior to his work at Brookings, Shearer assessed impacts of regional economic development and transportation policy at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and worked on projects at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission evaluating the size of metro Philadelphia’s clean economy. Shearer holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Economics and Urban Planning and Design from the University of Missouri—Kansas City.

Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.

His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.

Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.

Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.