EGF Welcomes First Annual Cohort of Non-Resident Fellows

The Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF) announced today a new non-resident fellow program and its inaugural cohort of five new non-resident fellows. The fellows will conduct original research and analysis on a breadth of issues and topics for EGF’s Independent America project, which explores the possibilities for and advantages of a more humble and pragmatic US foreign policy.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome this group of accomplished professionals to EGF,” commented Allyn Summa, EGF’s executive director. “Their diverse expertise in defense and foreign policy — from aid and security assistance to nuclear policy — will be valuable to EGF as we look to better understand US security interests and seek new approaches, which better reflect Americans’ priorities.”

• Dr. Giles David Arceneaux is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs who studies nuclear strategy. Dr. Arceneaux has written in War on the Rocks on COVID-19’s effect on British nuclear deterrence. As a fellow, Dr. Arceneaux will interrogate US nuclear policy and seek to make nuclear policy more accessible to Americans. Dr. Arceneaux will convene a symposium to evaluate the costs and risks of the Biden administration’s forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Dr. Arceneaux is also surveying public support for ballistic missile defense and will develop a policy memorandum, which will evaluate pathways for engaging the public on this issue.

• Mr. Michael A. Cohen is an MSNBC columnist, author of the Truth and Consequences Substack, and co-author of the book, Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans. As a fellow, Mr. Cohen will produce policy-focused explainer-style briefs which dig deeply into a major current foreign policy debate, and separate myths from facts. Mr. Cohen will continue writing a regular column for The New Republic questioning conventional foreign policy wisdom and will give ongoing editorial advice to the non-resident fellows and the larger Independent America project.
  
• Dr. Jessica Trisko Darden is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, a non-resident research fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and an affiliate at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute. Dr. Trisko Darden’s research interests include foreign aid, gender, and security. She is the author of Aiding and Abetting: US Foreign Assistance and State Violence, which argues that foreign assistance can aggravate repression in recipient countries. She is also the co-author of Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice. Dr. Trisko Darden is frequently published in The Conversation. Recently, she has written in the Washington Post on the use of gender by protestors in Myanmar and in War on the Rocks on international law’s blind spot for female war criminals. 
  
• Dr. Aroop Mukharji is a visiting scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts and an associate of the Applied History Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Mukharji is the host of two podcasts and video series, “Snack Break” and “Office Hours,” where he discusses foreign policy with Harvard faculty, experts, and policymakers for a general audience. Dr. Mukharji’s research focuses on the foreign policy of the Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley administrations to understand how the US became a great power at the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Mukharji is working on projects, which explore how threat inflation spurred US involvement in Asia during the late 1800s and the influence of America’s frontier wars on military doctrine. Dr. Mukharji sees education as an underappreciated element in US grand strategy (a topic he explored in Diplomas and Diplomacy: The History of the Marshall Scholarship) and will also be working on a project focused on this. 
  
• Dr. Rachel E. Tecott is an assistant professor at the US Naval War College in the Strategic and Operational Research Department, an adjunct fellow at the Center for New American Security, and a research affiliate at MIT. Dr. Tecott researches US military strategy and the bureaucratic, organizational, and cognitive impediments to its success. Dr. Tecott has recently written articles on America’s failure to build an effective Afghan army in Foreign Affairs and the Washington Post. A co-founder of the Future Strategy Forum, Dr. Tecott has a demonstrated interest in bridging gaps in the foreign policy community. As a fellow, Dr. Tecott will examine how bureaucratic and psychological processes within the military services create tension with US foreign policy goals.

Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at EGF who leads the Independent America project, also welcomed the non-resident fellows: “EGF is fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such a talented group of scholars and analysts. With US foreign policy at an inflection point, their insight and thought partnership will expand the impact of the Independent America project’s work on some of the most critical national security issues confronting the United States.”

EGF is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to helping people make meaning out of the impact geopolitics has on their lives by empowering them to get involved in the issues that matter to them most. EGF takes complex issues and ensures they are accessible to everyone through traditional and nontraditional media, including events and meetings, papers and presentations, videos, infographics, podcasts, and the full array of social media.

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This press release includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.