March 23, 2015
When I was preparing for Senate confirmation in 2012, an advisor tasked with ensuring I made it successfully through the process cautioned me about how members of Congress might perceive me. “You’re essentially an academic,” he told me with concern. “Some members of Congress hate academics.” More recently, a fellow panelist at a seminar described me as a “bureaucrat,” that is, one of the normally maligned workers who spend their careers inside the bowels of government. These contrasting views of who I am and what my career represents exemplify the potential identity crisis some in the national security field face. Some seem to believe that we must make a choice between two worlds: academe and government. In reality, many of us live in both worlds, and at times in the gap between them.
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