Mark Jacobson
Assistant Dean, Washington Programs, Maxwell School
Degree
PhD, Ohio State University
Biography
Assistant
Dean for Washington Programs Mark R. Jacobson oversees year-round academic
programs for Maxwell’s D.C. headquarters at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, the #1-ranked think tank in the United States
(University of Pennsylvania Global Go To Think Tank Index), where Maxwell
serves approximately 200 undergraduate, graduate, and midcareer executive
students each year.
A scholar-practitioner of foreign policy and national security,
Jacobson most recently served as the John J. McCloy Professor of American
Institutions and International Diplomacy at Amherst College and prior to that
at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. His teaching and
research interests include the history of propaganda and political warfare as well
as how identity groups have used military service for community validation in
the United States.
Jacobson previously served in government in a number of roles as
both a civil servant and political appointee, including as Special Assistant to
the Secretary of the Navy, as the first Deputy NATO Senior Civilian
Representative-Afghanistan and as a Presidential Management Intern. Jacobson
also worked on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee and as a Senior
Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He is a
veteran, having served in both the Army and Navy reserves with mobilizations to
Bosnia and Afghanistan.
Jacobson holds degrees from the University of Michigan, King’s
College (University of London), and The Ohio State University (from which he
earned a PhD in military history).