Congratulations to LTC Jason Dempsey (Ph.D. 08) on his appointment to the 2010-2011 Class of White House Fellows.
White House Fellows typically spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House Staff, the Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries and other top-ranking government officials. Responsibilities range from chairing inter-agency meetings and designing and implementing federal policies, to drafting speeches for cabinet secretaries to representing their agencies on Capitol Hill and in international treaty negotiations. Job assignments are made by the Director of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships in consultation with agency officials on the basis of interviews conducted during "Placement Week."
Jason Dempsey is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army. He spent 2009 in Afghanistan as the Operations Officer for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division and was responsible for coordinating and planning the actions of a 3,200-person task force conducting counterinsurgency operations in two previously unoccupied provinces south of Kabul. In 2005, he deployed to Iraq to help draft and coordinate policy towards Kirkuk and the reconciliation of conflict stemming from the displacement of Kurdish and Shi'ite populations in northern Iraq. He has also served with the 82nd Airborne Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the 3rd Infantry Division. Col. Dempsey graduated with honors from West Point and received the Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. His book, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics and American Civil-Military Relations, was published by Princeton University Press in 2010. He has also published articles on presidential approval ratings during foreign policy crises, Army efforts toward gender integration, and the experiences of Hispanics in the United States Army. For his research, Col. Dempsey was awarded a Dwight Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Fellowship in 2005 and served as a working group member of the Army's Commission on Officer Diversity and Advancement.