Dr. J. Peter Pham is the Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University as well as Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science and Africana Studies.

His research interests include international relations, international law, political theory, and socio-political ethics, with particular concentrations on the areas of United States foreign policy, African politics and security, terrorism and political violence, and religion and global politics.

Dr. Pham is the author of over two hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. Among his recent publications are Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press, 2004), Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (Nova Publishers, 2005), Africa: Mapping New Boundaries in International Law (co-authored; Hart Publishing, 2007), More...

and Africa Matters: A Strategy for Winning the New Scramble (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2008). He also authored the bestselling Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession (Oxford University Press, 2004), now in its revised edition with translations in Portuguese and Polish.

Dr. Pham authors a one-of-a-kind weekly column on African security issues, “Strategic Interests,” which is distributed by the World Defense Review, and contributes to a number of online publications, including National Review Online and National Interest online. He also writes for The Tank, the military blog of National Review. Dr. Pham has appeared in various media outlets, including CBS News, CBC News, SABC News, VOA News, CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC News, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.

Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress and conducted briefings or consulted for both Congressional and Executive agencies, including the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2005, he served as member of the International Republican Institute (IRI) delegation monitoring the national elections in Liberia. He also served on the IRI pre-election assessment (2006) and election observation (2007) delegations to Nigeria.

Dr. Pham is an Adjunct Fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an Advisor of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a member of the Editorial Review Board of Human Rights & Human Welfare, and a member of the International Board of Advisors of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. He is also Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), chaired by Professor Bernard Lewis.