Dr. Mark Jacobson has over thirty-years of experience as a policymaker, academic, and uniformed servicemember working on some of the most complex and politically sensitive national security issues facing the United States. He is currently the Historian at the International Spy Museum and a Senior Fellow at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. His academic focus is on the history and contemporary use of political warfare as an instrument of and he maintains a strong interest in the experience of war as seen through the eyes of participants. He serves on the board of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the World War Two Foundation and Villanova University’s LePage Center for History in the Public Interest. Jacobson is also a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
As an academic, Jacobson has served as the Assistant Dean for Washington Programs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and as the John J. McCloy ’16 Visiting Professor of American Institutions and International Diplomacy at Amherst College as well as in full and part-time roles at Georgetown University and as an adjunct at George Washington University. His government service includes appointments as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, and as the first Deputy NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, where he advised three NATO commanders on the political dynamics of the allied mission. Prior to that Jacobson worked for Senator Carl Levin on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee and in civil service assignments at the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A veteran, Jacobson’s military service includes time as both an Army psychological operations NCO and as Navy reserve intelligence officer, with mobilizations to Bosnia in 1996 and to Afghanistan in 2006.