John A. Nagl

Dr. John Nagl is the Ninth Head of School of The Haverford School. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Prior to assuming his role at The Haverford School in 2013, Dr. Nagl was the inaugural Minerva Research Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and has also taught at West Point and Georgetown University.

Dr. Nagl was the President of the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C. and remains a Non-Resident Senior Fellow. He served on the Defense Policy Board and on the Reserve Forces Policy Board and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served in the Army for 20 years, leading a tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm and serving as the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Dr. Nagl was a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy Class of 1988 who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He was the Alumnus of the Year of Creighton Preparatory High School in 2012.

Dr. Nagl is the author of "Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War" and "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife." He was on the writing team that produced the "Counterinsurgency Field Manual." He has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal and has appeared on "The News Hour" with Jim Lehrer and "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.