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SIPA Faculty
Reid L. Sawyer
International Affairs Building, 13th Floor
Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs
Phone: 212-854-3213
rs1115@columbia.edu
Biography:
Major Reid Sawyer is the Executive Director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences. He is currently an instructor at Columbia University where he teaches a graduate seminar in terrorism studies. Additionally, he works with a variety of government agencies in addressing the terrorism threat including the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands and the Fire Department of New York City and the New York City Police Department Counterterrorism Division.
Major Sawyer's research interests include terrorism and counterterrorism policy. He has been a visiting lecturer on the responses to the terrorist threat at the National Defense University and the National War College; the Undersecretary General, Department for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations; the Canadian Political Science Association; the World Conference of Religion and Peace at the United Nations; Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and Wagner College.
He is an intelligence officer who has served in a variety of special operations assignments prior to teaching at West Point. These assignments involved extensive travel overseas including Africa, Asia, Europe and South America and included several humanitarian and peacekeeping missions. He also served in a counter-narcotics unit which operated throughout the Caribbean basin.
Major Sawyer recently co-edited two books on the challenges facing policymakers from terrorism and other transnational threats, Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Readings and Interpretations, 2ed and Defeating Terrorism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association and the Foreign Policy Association. Major Sawyer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in International Relations from the United States Military Academy, and a Masters of Public Administration from Columbia University.
Research Interests: Terrorism