Lionel Beehner

Focus Areas: International Relations

Lionel Beehner (MIA '02) is an Adjunct Faculty and Senior Editorial Director at SIPA, where he leads the dean’s communications portfolio and is the managing editor of SIPA’s new flagship Policy Reports. Beehner holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.  Previously, he worked as Director of Thought Leadership at ReD Associates, a consultancy specializing in the social sciences; Director of Research and Assistant Professor at the Modern War Institute at West Point; and as an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he was based at the UN Department of Peace Operations, working on issues of technology and security and drafting speeches, policy memos, and opinion pieces for DPO staff. He is formerly a Senior Staff Writer at CFR and his writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The New Republic, Guardian, Slate, USA Today, Huffington Post, and The Atlantic Monthly, and is a frequent book reviewer at Political Science Quarterly. He is the coeditor of Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations (Oxford 2021). Beehner has also been an Adjunct Professor at Bard's Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) program and Vassar College's Department of Political Science, where he teaches courses on the intersection of technology and future of war.

Education

• PhD in Political Science, Yale University