J. Peter Pham is vice president of the Atlantic Council and director of the Council’s Africa Center. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council in 2011, Dr. Pham was a tenured associate professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he was director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs. From 2008 to 2017 he also served as vice president of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and was founding editor-in-chief of its peer-reviewed quarterly Journal of the Middle East and Africa. He is the author of more than 300 essays and reviews and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books, including Somalia: Fixing Africa’s Most Failed State(coauthored with Greg Mills and David Kilcullen). In 2015, the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution elected Dr. Pham to the Board of the National Museum of African Art, of which he is presently vice-chair.
He is frequently invited to testify before the United States Congress and brief senior administration officials and has also served as an adviser to the United Nations, foreign governments, and multinational corporations.
Dr. Pham is likely to be nominated as assistant secretary for African affairs at the State Department.
Recommended Reading:
Dr. Pham's strategy paper for the Trump administration:
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/AC_StrategyPapers_No7_Africa_F-WEB.pdf
Dr. Pham's op-ed on Niger attack:
http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/357828-niger-is-on-the-front-lines-of-the-war-against-terrorism
Other recent articles by Dr. Pham may be found here:http://www.jppham.com/