In Memoriam: Aaron Rapport, Former International Security Program Research Fellow

Dr. Aaron Rapport, a 2009–2010 International Security Program (ISP) research fellow, died peacefully in hospice on June 27, 2019 in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He had battled cancer for four years.

Aaron, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota, had joined ISP in September 2009 as a predoctoral research fellow. He also had a nonresidential fellowship with the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. He finished his dissertation during his fellowship year.

He subsequently became an assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University. In 2013, Aaron became a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University, and in 2014, he became a fellow of Corpus Christi College.

Aaron's publications include Waging War, Planning Peace: U.S. Noncombat Operations and Major Wars (Cornell University Press, 2015), which was published in the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs Series and "The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders' Assessments of 'Postwar' Iraq," which appeared in the Winter 2012/2013  issue of International Security.

Dr. Steven Miller, ISP Director, offers this remembrance: 

Aaron Rapport was a wonderful person, a good colleague, and a promising scholar who had made great progress in establishing his career even while struggling with serious illness.  We are proud that he is numbered among the alumni of the International Security Program.  We are all deeply saddened that he has been struck down in the prime of his life.

In 2018, Aaron was one of the winners of the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning's Pilkington Prize,  which acknowledges excellence in teaching.  The following excerpt is from descriptions of the 2018 Pilkington Prize Winners:

Dr Rapport has reshaped and reinvigorated the International relations teaching in POLIS and across the board. His contributions have been at every level, from the introductory papers through to Master's teaching. Dr Rapport has also initiated, organised and moderates the professional development seminars for all first-year PhD students in Politics and International Studies. Dr Rapport has brought the study of International Relations alive for students, with humour, verve and originality….

A Cambridge University video interview with Aaron can be viewed below.