William Inboden

William Inboden holds the William Powers, Jr. Director's Chair for the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas-Austin. He also serves as Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Inboden’s other current roles include Non-Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Senior Advisor with Avascent International, and Associate Scholar with Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project. Previously he served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council at the White House, where he worked on a range of foreign policy issues including the National Security Strategy, strategic forecasting, democracy and governance, contingency planning, counter-radicalization, and multilateral institutions and initiatives. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a Member of the Policy Planning Staff and a Special Advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom, and has worked as a staff member in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Inboden has also served as Senior Vice President of the London-based Legatum Institute, and as a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and his commentary has appeared in numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Sky News, BBC, and CNN. He has lectured widely in academic and policy settings, and received numerous research and professional development fellowships. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge University Press) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Inboden received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from Yale University, and his A.B. from Stanford University.