Morgan Kaplan Joins Belfer Center as Executive Editor of International Security

Cambridge, MA – Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs welcomed Morgan Kaplan this week as the new Executive Editor of International Security. Kaplan succeeds Sean Lynn-Jones, who retired after 31 years of service to the journal he led to repeated No. 1 rankings for scholarly impact. Kaplan joins the Center from Northwestern University, where he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. Earlier he was an International Security Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

“International Security is a crown jewel,” said Belfer Center Director Ash Carter. “There is no journal in its field more insightful or impactful. We look forward to Morgan building on this tradition of excellence.”

“I am absolutely thrilled to rejoin the Belfer Center and the Harvard Kennedy School,” said Kaplan. “International Security has a proud and storied history of publishing leading academic research on issues of the utmost importance to the policy community. I look forward to working with all members of the Harvard community to maintain the journal’s renowned excellence and to continue its impactful growth.”

Kaplan’s research examines the international politics of rebellion with a focus on how opposition groups use diplomacy to solicit third-party support. He uses field research and archival work to produce empirically rich and historically informed case studies from the Middle East and beyond. While he specializes in the security politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Kaplan’s research addresses broader trends in international security, such as the origins and outcomes of third-party intervention, self-determination and state formation, and transnational opposition and alliance politics.

His work has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, the Department of Education, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies, among others. He has conducted field work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. Kaplan holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.