Lynn E. Davis

Lynn E. Davis is an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation. From 2006 to 2014 she served as director of RAND’s Washington office and from 1993 to 1997, she served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs.

Her current research focuses on strategic planning, terrorism, citizen preparedness, and defense strategy and force structure issues. She was the senior study group advisor for the Commission on National Security/21st Century. Prior to joining the State Department, Davis was vice president and director of the RAND Arroyo Center. She has also served on the staffs of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She has taught in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, at the National War College, and at Columbia University.

Davis’s recent RAND publications include: A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat (Lynn Davis et al., 2017), Clarifying the Rules for Targeted Killing (Lynn Davis et al., 2016), The Days After a Deal with Iran: U.S. Policies of Hedging and Engaging (2014), Armed and Dangerous? UAVs and U.S. Security (Lynn E. Davis et al., 2014), Choosing A New Organization for Management and Disposition of Commercial and Defense High-Level Radioactive Materials (Lynn E. Davis et al., 2013). She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.