FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Maxwell School Professor Montgomery Meigs Named by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to Head Up Anti-Insurgency Task Force

The Department of Defense announced on December 5 that Montgomery Meigs, professor of public administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, has been named director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force, reporting to the deputy secretary of defense, effective December 12. Meigs will take a one-year leave from the Maxwell School to return to the Pentagon.

The Task Force was formed in 2003 to coordinate resources across the military branches and technologies in order to defeat current and future improvised explosive device threats. As part of his new position, Meigs will oversee the creation of a training center to assist the service branches in providing troops with pre-deployment IED threat training.

Meigs has extensive experience in asymmetric warfare and in addressing the IED threat. Before his retirement from the U.S. Army as a four-star General, he served on active duty for more than 35 years, most recently as commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe and of NATO's peacekeeping force in Bosnia. He previously served as commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and was a professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy. Meigs has served as a military analyst for NBC News and published various articles on military policy and leadership, as well as a book, Slide Rules and Submarines (National Defense University Press, 1990). Meigs earned a B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The Department of Defense press release is available at: http://www.dod.gov/releases/2005/nr20051205-5186.html
 

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The Maxwell School of Syracuse University, founded in 1924, is the premier academic institution in the United States committed to scholarship, civic leadership, and education in public and international affairs. Maxwell is home to Syracuse University’s social science departments and to numerous nationally recognized multidisciplinary graduate programs in public policy, international studies, social policy, and conflict resolution. Maxwell's graduate program in public administration -- the first of its kind -- is ranked consistently the best in the nation.

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Contact: Jill Leonhardt, director of communications, (315) 443-5492; jlleonha@maxwell.syr.edu.