Professors at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (SFS) were appointed to the Biden administration’s Defense Policy Board.

The Defense Policy Board, a subset of the U.S. Department of Defense below the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy made up of 19 members, provides informed advice to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. New appointees to the board include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Victor Cha, vice dean for faculty and graduate affairs and holder of the D.S. Song-Korea Foundation Endowed Chair in the department of government and SFS; and Michael O’Hanlon, professor in the Center for Security Studies and senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. 

Former Secretary of State Albright was sworn in as chair for the board in Nov. 2021 after being removed from the board by the Trump administration a year earlier. 

The Defense Policy Board provides an opportunity for independent, private citizens to provide expertise and perspective to assist the Secretary of Defense in defense policy decision making, according to O’Hanlon.

“Based on the first meeting, and based on my expectations of what this kind of a board can usefully accomplish, I will use words like friendly skeptic, tough love and second set of eyes to convey the notion of a group of individuals that would like to see Secretary Austin and the United States and the Department of Defense do well, but may or may not agree with him on everything, may or may not agree with each other on everything, but still are hopeful there’s some utility in the group getting together,” O’Hanlon said in an interview with The Hoya.

Though the U.S. should remain apprehensive of other threats, the most concerning matter in defense policy for the Biden administration is dealing with Russia and China, according to O’Hanlon.

“The whole point here is to try to bear in mind that the world does interfere with your plans and your strategies,” O’Hanlon said. “The idea that you might think Russia and China should be your main concerns, but something else changes that dynamic altogether — that’s always a possibility. At a purely conceptual and historical level, I would say that those are the two greatest concerns, and they will remain that.”

Cha has been a member of the Georgetown faculty since 1995 and has taught a broad range of courses in international relations, foreign policy and Asian studies. He is also currently the senior vice president and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Cha hopes to work alongside fellow Defense Policy Board members to provide advice to U.S. Department of Defense officials.

“It’s an honor to serve on the DPB and humbling to do so under the leadership of Secretary Albright. The purpose of the DPB is to provide advice to the senior leadership of the Pentagon and there is no better senior statesperson to do that than Secretary Albright. I hope to support her and the DPB in any way that I can,” Cha wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Albright, along with teaching courses in diplomacy at Georgetown in the SFS, is chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, part of Dentons Global Advisors, and Albright Capital Management LLC. She also chairs the National Democratic Institute, serves as the president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation and is honorary co-chair of the World Refugee Council.

Georgetown is proud to see its professors serve as real-world leaders in foreign policy, according to Joel Hellman, dean of the SFS.

“SFS faculty live our SFS values through their commitment to public service,” Hellman wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We welcome the appointment of such accomplished professors as Victor and Michael O’Hanlon to the Defense Policy Board. They represent the best of SFS.”