Guests: Montgomery McFate RSS

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2007:

  1. A discussion about Counterinsurgency
    A discussion about Counterinsurgency

    with Montgomery McFate and Sarah Sewall on Dec 24, 2007

    Duration
    31 min
    Comments
    27 comments
    Rating
    * * * *

Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist by training, has spent the past few years trying to convince the Department of Defense that cultural knowledge should be a national security priority. Dr. McFate is currently a research staff member in the Joint Warfighting Analysis Program at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, VA. Formerly, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science Defense Policy Fellow at the US Navy?s Office of Naval Research, where she worked on a project concerning Iraq?s cultural terrain for the Joint IED Task Force, among other projects. She was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award by the Secretary of the Navy for her work at ONR. Before coming to ONR, Dr. McFate was a social scientist in RAND?s Intelligence Policy Center, where her research focused primarily on North Korean culture and society. Dr. McFate received a B.A. from University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Yale University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her Ph.D. dissertation concerned British counterinsurgency policy and operations in Northern Ireland. As an anthropologist, Dr. McFate has conducted ethnographic field research in Syria, Northern Ireland, England, South Korea, and with Islamic communities in Germany. Dr. McFate?s legal background includes a clinical internship on the United States Attorney’s Office Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Squad, and experience as a litigation associate at the law firm of Baker & McKenzie in San Francisco, CA. She has published in such journals as Journal of Conflict Studies, Harvard Journal of International Law, Peace and Conflict Studies, Military Review and Joint Forces Quarterly. She is a native of Marin County, CA where she grew up on a WWII naval ammunition barge that had been converted into a houseboat.