Kimberly Kagan

Dr. Kimberly Kagan, President and Founder of the Institute for the Study of War

Drs. Frederick and Kimberly Kagan touring Basra in 2008.
Website	ISW

Kimberly Ellen Kagan (born 1972) is an American military historian. She heads the Institute for the Study of War and has taught at West Point, Yale, Georgetown University, and American University. Kagan has published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Weekly Standard and elsewhere. She supported the surge in Iraq and has since advocated for an expanded and restructured American military campaign in Afghanistan. In 2009 she served on Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategic assessment team.

Kimberly Kagan is the daughter of Kalman Kessler, an accountant and school teacher from New York City and his wife Frances. She received her B.A. in Classical Civilization and her Ph.D. in History from Yale University. At Yale, Kagan met her husband Frederick Kagan, who is an American resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), son of Donald Kagan, a well-known historian and brother of Robert Kagan, another well-known writer and publicist. Robert Kagan's wife is Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Kagan held an “Olin Postdoctoral Fellowship in Military History” at Yale in International Security Studies from 2004-2005. She is an affiliate of Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, where she was a National Security Fellow from 2002-2003.