2025 Keogh Chair - Risa Brooks

Dr. Risa Brooks is Allis-Chalmers Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA, a non-resident fellow in the Future Security program at New America and non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is the author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press),  co-editor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press), and co-editor (with Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer) of Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Politics, Society and Modern War (Oxford University Press). Her research and commentaries have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The New York Times and in numerous academic journals. Brooks received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and formerly held positions as research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, U.K. and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her primary research interests include U.S. and comparative civil-military relations, strategic assessment and military professionalism.

Book Publications:

• (Co-editor) Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Pres, 2007)
• Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press, 2008)
• (Co-editor) Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Academic Publications:

• 'Liberalization and Militancy in the Arab World' Orbis, 2002.
• ‘Muslim ‘Homegrown’ Terrorism: How Serious is the Threat in the United States?' International Security (2011)
• ‘The Perils of Politics: While Staying Apolitical is Good for Both the U.S. Military and for the Country,' Orbis (2013)
• 'Integrating the Civil-Military Relations Subfield,' Annual Review of Political Science (2019)
• ‘Paradoxes of Professionalism: Re-Thinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States” International Security (2020)
• 'Beyond Huntington: Military Professionalism Today,' Parameters (2021)
• ‘Through the Looking Glass:  Trump Era U.S. Civil-Military Relations in Comparative Perspective,' Strategic Studies Quarterly (2021)
• (co-author) ‘What Makes a Military Professional? Evaluating Norm Socialization in West Point Cadets,' Armed Forces & Society (2021)
• (co-author) “Slow Rolls, Shoulder-Taps and Coups: Building a Research Program in Military Dissent Across Regime Types,' Journal of Global Security (2022)
• 'Beyond Defection: Explaining the Tunisian and Egyptian Militaries’ Divergent Roles in the Arab Spring' Journal of Strategic Studies (2022)
• (co-author) 'Twice the Citizen: How Military Attitudes of Superiority Undermine Civilian Control in the United States' Journal of Conflict Resolution (2022)
• (co-author) 'Oust the Leader, Keep the Regime?: Autocratic Civil-Military Relations and Coup-Behavior in the Tunisian and Egyptian Militaries during the 2011 Arab Spring,' Security Studies (2022)
• (co-author) 'Unpacking ‘Stacking’: How Manipulating Identity in Security Forces Safeguards Regime Security' Armed Forces & Society (2022)
• (co-author) 'The Sources of Military Dissent: Why and How the U.S. Military Contests Decisions about the Use of Force' European Journal of International Security (2022)
• ‘Tying the Hands of Militants: Civilian Targeting and Societal Pressures in the Provisional IRA and Palestinian Hamas' Journal of Global Security Studies (2022)