25th Anniversary of 9/11

John Hillen

The Honorable Dr. John Hillen (Duke PPS '88) is a Distinguished Lecturing Fellow at Duke University’s Center for Politics (POLIS) and an Executive-in-Residence of the Political Science Department.   Dr. Hillen teaches courses on civil discourse, politics, leadership,  strategy, diplomacy, and national security.  He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy.   Prior to Duke, Dr. Hillen served as the James C. Wheat Jr. Visiting Professor in Leadership at historic Hampden-Sydney College and was Executive-in-Residence and Professor of the Practice in the business school at George Mason University, where he won a number of teaching awards.

Jen'nan Read

Jen'nan Ghazal Read is a Professor of Sociology at Duke University with secondary appointments in the Sanford School of Public Policy and Duke Global Health Institute. She is a Carnegie Scholar whose expertise lies in the social determinants of US health disparities and on the assimilation experiences of Arabs and Muslims in the United States. Her most recent work has focused on the categorization of racial groups classified by the US Census as “White," and the consequences for social mobility when groups such as Arab Americans and eastern Europeans are isolated from the generic White category. 

Rachel Myrick

Rachel Myrick is the Douglas and Ellen Lowey Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke. Her research explores how partisan polarization affects foreign policymaking in democracies, with an emphasis on U.S. national security policy. More broadly, she is interested in the interplay between domestic and international politics in matters of security and conflict. Her first book, Polarization and International Politics: How Extreme Partisanship Threatens Global Stability, was published in 2025 with Princeton University Press in their Studies in International History and Politics Series.

Milton (Jamie) Sands

Rear Admiral USN Retired

Milton James Sand III is a retired United States Navy Rear Admrial and Navy SEAL who served as commander of the United States Naval Special Warfare Command from July 26, 2024 until August 22, 2025.

David Schanzer

David Schanzer is a professor of the practice at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy University and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. He teaches courses, conducts research and engages in public dialogue on counterterrorism strategy, counterterrorism law and homeland security.



Schanzer is the lead author of a trilogy National Institute of Justice studies on terrorism prevention: “Engaging Communities to Prevent Violent Extremism: A Review of the Obama Administration’s CVE Initiative,” (2019), “The Challenge and Promise of Using Community Policing Strategies to Prevent Violent Extremism” (2015) and “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim Americans” (2010).

 

Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen is the author or editor of ten books that have been translated into 24 languages, three of which were New York Times bestsellers; the producer of multiple Emmy-nominated documentaries and Vice President for Global Studies and Fellows at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and CNN’s national security analyst. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Susan Colbourn

Susan Colbourn is Associate Research Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy and Associate Director of the Program in American Grand Strategy. At AGS, she manages the day-to-day operations of the program, including strategic planning, events, and outreach and partnerships. A diplomatic and international historian, her research focuses on the politics of European security, grand strategy, and international order since 1945. She is the author of Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Cornell, 2022).