Walter Russell Mead is the James Clark Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and editor at large of The American Interest. From 1997 to 2010, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, serving as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy from 2003 until his departure. Until 2011, he was also a Brady Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy at Yale, where he had taught in the Yale International Security Studies Program since 2008. He is a founding board member of the New America Foundation.
His book, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), received the Lionel Gelber Award for best book in English on international relations in 2002, among other honors and prizes.
Mr. Mead’s most recent book, God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), is a major study of 400 years of conflict between Anglophone powers and rivals ranging from absolute monarchies like Spain and France through Communist and Fascist enemies in the twentieth century to al Qaeda today.
Mr. Mead is also the author of the “Via Meadia” blog at The American Interest.com, where he writes regular essays on international affairs, religion, politics, culture, education, economics, technology, literature, and the media. Mead’s writings are frequently linked to and discussed by major news outlets and websites such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Harper’s, The Washington Post, and RealClearPolitics, as well as by foreign periodicals. He serves as a regular reviewer of books for Foreign Affairs and frequently appears on national and international radio and television programs.
Mr. Mead is a native of South Carolina and lives in Queens, New York.