Jordan Tama

Jordan Tama is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at American University’s School of International Service, a Research Fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, and a Co-Director of the Bridging the Gap Project. A political scientist by training, his research examines the politics, processes, and institutions of U S foreign and national security policy making. He has published work on national security strategic planning, presidential-congressional relations, and independent commissions.

Dr. Tama’s research on strategic planning has appeared in Political Science Quarterly and the Journal of Public Policy. He is also the author of Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises, and the co-author of A Creative Tension: The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress. He has published other work in Political Research Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Congress and the Presidency, Armed Forces and Society, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Dr. Tama is currently working on a book manuscript—tentatively titled Bipartisanship in a Polarized Age: When Democrats and Republicans Cooperate on U.S. Foreign Policy—as well as papers on the conduct of government strategic reviews, the politics associated with international sanctions, and the views of foreign policy elites. He is also co-editing the sixth edition of Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations.

Dr. Tama has been awarded fellowships by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, American Political Science Association, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Outside academia, he has served as a senior congressional foreign policy aide, a foreign policy speechwriter, and a national security adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.