Jason Dempsey

Interest Areas: American Politics, War and Politics, American Civilian-Military Relations

Jason Dempsey is the Executive Director for the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University. 

Prior to working at Columbia, he was commissioned from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served for 22 years as an infantry officer in the United States Army, with a mix of conventional and unconventional assignments. His tactical assignments included service in the 82nd Airborne Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 10th Mountain Division, the 101st Airborne Division, and the 3rd Infantry Division. As a Captain, he was sent to Columbia University enroute to a teaching assignment at West Point. At Columbia, he would earn a doctorate in political science while conducting the research that led to his book, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations.

He deployed to Iraq in 2005 and spent nearly two years in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2014, first conducting counterinsurgency campaigns in provinces south of Kabul and along the border with Pakistan. He later returned as a combat advisor to the Afghan Border Police.

Between those deployments to Afghanistan, he spent two years in the White House, where he first worked as a White House Fellow to help design and launch Joining Forces, First Lady Obama and Dr. Biden’s comprehensive national initiative to support service members and their families. He then shifted to the task force overseeing the redesign of government services to transitioning veterans and to coordinate the interagency process around the implementation of Presidential Study Directive 9: Strengthening Our Military Families. He last served in uniform as special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he designed and drafted the Call to Continued Service, a statement signed by all of the Joint Chiefs imploring service members to continued service to the nation as veterans. 

Since leaving the Army, he has worked to improve post-service pathways for military veterans. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Most recently he co-edited a volume on the future of America’s military, Bend But do Not Break: Shaping the Future of the All Volunteer Force. 

Education

• PhD in Political Science, Columbia University
• BS, United States Military Academy, West Point