Lindsay Cohn

Focus Areas: International Security, Civil-military Relations, Foreign Policy, Public Opinion, Strategy, Militarized Policing

Lindsay P. Cohn is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, where she teaches strategy, international security, foreign policy analysis, and civil-military relations. Her research and publications focus on civil-military relations, manpower and personnel issues, public opinion and foreign policy, comparative political economy, militarized policing, and national/international security law. Her primary area of geographical expertise is Europe, but she also has interests in the Middle East and parts of Africa. Dr. Cohn is fluent in German and reads French, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.

Before joining the Naval War College in 2014, she spent a year at the Pentagon working on building partner capacity programs (focusing particularly on the Middle East, Europe, and Africa), and four years as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Northern Iowa. She earned her PhD in Political Science (International Relations and Political Theory) from Duke University; her undergraduate studies were in Political Science, History, and Germanic linguistics. She also spent time at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, the Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr (SOWI) in Strausberg, the Center for Transatlantic Relations (Johns Hopkins SAIS) in Washington DC, and the Free University Berlin. She has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations (International Affairs Fellowship), and Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She is also an alumna of SIPA’s own Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS).

Dr. Cohn has given expert testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee (on the civil-military relations issues at stake in the nomination of a second recently-retired General to be Secretary of Defense), the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (on military recruiting and retention), and the Virginia General Assembly’s Courts of Justice and Public Safety Committees (on police and National Guard reform). She has been consulted on manpower and other civil-military relations issues by the US Marine Corps’ Talent Management Strategy Group, the Canada-US Reserve General Officers’ Advisory Board, the Naval War College of Peru, the Bundeswehr University in Munich, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. She has been invited to present her research at the MIT Security Studies Seminar, the Princeton Security Studies Colloquium, Cornell University, the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University, Colgate University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, the University of Southern Denmark, and the NGO Good Governance Africa. She holds the Commander’s Award for Public Service from the Department of the Army, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Department of the Navy, and the Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Her current research focuses on the use of federal military forces for domestic policing in the United States, manpower and recruiting/retention issues in European/North American militaries (particularly reserve issues), public opinion and foreign/security policy, and professional military ethics.

Education

• PhD in Political Science, Duke University
• BA in Political Science, Duke University

Awards & Honor

• Meritorious Civilian Service Award, given by the US Department of the Navy, 2022
• Award for Faculty Excellence in Research, given by the U.S. Naval War College, 2020
• Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Achievement, given by the
• Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, 2014
• Meritorious Service Award, given by the UNI Veterans Association, 2012
• Apple Polisher Award, given by the UNI Student Admissions Ambassadors to a faculty
  
  member who had a significant impact on a student ambassador’s life, 2011
• Commander’s Award for Public Service, given by the US Department of the Army, 2010