Will Quinn

Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs Predoctoral Fellow

Biography

Will Quinn is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, where he assists with the strategic planning, coordination, and programs of the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Diplomacy and Statecraft (AJI). In addition to these duties, he is completing a dissertation on U.S. foreign policy towards the Russian Empire and early Soviet Union and its impact on the development of U.S. statecraft.
 
Prior to beginning his doctoral research, Will served as a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee for Chairman John McCain where he conducted oversight and wrote legislation shaping Department of Defense policy on the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, security cooperation, and homeland defense, among other subjects. Before joining the committee in 2015, he worked in strategic communications for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on the U.S. federal budget and economic policy.
 
Will has contributed research to several recent books, including Niall Ferguson's Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923-1968 (2015), Eliot Cohen's The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force (2017), and Francis J. Gavin's Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (2020), and has worked as a Summer Associate and Adjunct Researcher at the RAND Corporation on several projects focused on defense, national security, and intelligence policy. At SAIS, he teaches a regular professional skills course on briefing and has served as a teaching assistant in courses on intelligence with Professor John McLaughlin and Shakespeare and politics with Professor Eliot Cohen. Mr. Quinn holds an M.A. in International Relations with a concentration in Strategic Studies from SAIS and an A.B. in History from Harvard College.