Biography - Jeffrey A. James

Jeffrey James brings to his appointment a diverse career in international politics, development, and security based upon academic training and in-the-field experience. His professional background includes private sector research, teaching and consulting, while his public sector involvement has been of an academic and consulting nature with primarily Federal agencies, including the defense, international development and intelligence communities, and international organizations such as the United Nations. He has lived for extended periods throughout Africa, briefly in Pakistan, and traveled widely in Europe and elsewhere. He obtained an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Certificate of Eastern African Studies and Ph.D. in political science and public administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His dissertation research, funded in part by a Shell Foundation grant, was conducted in Kenya; portions of which were later published as occasional papers.

Dr. James began his career teaching in Malawi, Central Africa, followed by his graduate studies at Syracuse University. Following that he taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo before coming to Washington, DC for an extended period of teaching and consulting. His teaching focused on African and European politico-military issues, energy and technology, and economic development strategies for emerging post-colonial regimes. The then-Defense Intelligence College hired Dr. James to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in low-intensity conflict to commissioned and non-commissioned officers. His consulting work centered on energy and technology transfer issues facing numerous Federal agencies in Washington. At the request of Congress he delivered testimony on U.S. funded development programs for Africa, and lectured at the then-Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department.

James also taught at the University of Ghana for two years for U.S. Agency for International Development, and later taught briefly in Morocco on rural administration issues for the United Nations. He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Grant in addition to various other awards and fellowships.

Dr. James’ wide-ranging intellectual interests include national security assessment, regional security issues, politics and history of Africa, and the foreign policy process in Africa. In addition to the above schools he has taught at George Mason, American, Northwestern and Syracuse Universities, and at a teacher training college in Africa.