Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead (born June 12, 1952) is an American academic.

He is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and taught American foreign policy at Yale University.

He was also the editor-at-large of The American Interest magazine.

Mead is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, and a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs, the quarterly foreign policy journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mead was born on June 12, 1952, in Columbia, South Carolina.

His father, Loren Mead, was an Episcopal priest and scholar who grew up in South Carolina.

His mother is the former Polly Ayres Mellette.

Mead is one of four children with two brothers and one sister.

Mead was educated at the Groton School, a private boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts.

He then graduated from Yale University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.

Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and previously taught American foreign policy at Yale University.

He was also the editor-at-large of The American Interest.

Special Providence, which stemmed from an article originally published in the Winter 1999/2000 issue of The National Interest, "The Jacksonian Tradition," describes the four main guiding philosophies that have influenced the formation of American foreign policy in history: the Hamiltonians, the Wilsonians, the Jeffersonians, and the Jacksonians.

The New Left Review described the book as a "robust celebration of Jacksonianism as it historically was... an admiring portrait of a tough, xenophobic folk community, ruthless to outsiders or deserters, rigid in its codes of honour and violence."

Not all critics praised the book, however.

"Despite the hype surrounding the book, it ultimately challenges little," the geographer Joseph Nevins wrote.

"To the contrary, it reinforces the tired notion of U.S. exceptionalism. Thus, he [Mead] paints U.S. deployment of violence as inherently less brutal than that of Washington's enemies. In doing so, he sometimes grossly understates the human devastation wrought by the United States."

Of the four traditions of American politics described in Special Providence, Jacksonianism has received the most attention.

Mead has expanded and applied his description of Jacksonianism in his other writings.

The idea of a Jacksonian tradition in American politics has received greater interest and attention since the candidacy and election of Donald Trump, particularly because of both former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon's references to Jackson and comparisons of Jackson to Trump.

The New York Times has speculated that Bannon drew inspiration from Mead's description of Jacksonianism in Special Providence.

In an interview with Politico, Mead was dubbed the "Trump Whisperer" by the author Susan Glasser.

The book outlines American foreign policy under the Bush administration after September 11, 2001, and contextualizes it in the history of U.S. foreign policy.

In it, Mead recommends changes in the American approach to terrorism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and international institutions.

In 2001, Mead published Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World.

It won the Lionel Gelber Award for the best book in English on International Relations in 2002.

The Italian translation won the Premio Acqui Storia, an annual award for the most important historical book published.

In June 2005, Mead published Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.

In October 2007, he published God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World about the Anglo-American tradition of world power since the 17th century.

It argues that the individualism inherent in British and American religion was instrumental for their rise to global power and integrates Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" with Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" in its predictions for the future.

The Economist, The Financial Times and The Washington Post all listed God and Gold as one of the best non-fiction books of the year.

His past teaching positions have included Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, at Yale University, from 2008 to 2011, as well as Presidents Fellow at the World Policy Institute at The New School, from 1987 to 1997.

His most recent book, The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People was published by Knopf in 2022.

Mead argues that Gentile support for a Jewish state and geopolitical realities have influenced US policy towards Israel as much as anything else.

He served as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations until 2010, and is a Global View Columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

He is a cofounder of the New America Foundation, a thinktank that has been described as "radical centrist" in orientation.

An active faculty member at Bard's campus in Annandale and its New York-based Globalization and International Affairs Program, he teaches on American foreign policy and Anglo-American grand strategy, including curriculum addressing Sun Tzu and Clausewitz.

He has conducted coursework on the role of public intellectuals in the internet age, as well as the role of religion in diplomacy.

Mead is also a regular instructor for the U.S. State Department's Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSIs) for Scholars and Secondary Educators.

In 2014, he joined the Hudson Institute as a Distinguished Scholar in American Strategy and Statesmanship.