Sarah B. Sewall

Lecturer in Public Policy
Lecturer in Public Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
Office Address
Rubenstein-118
Mailing Address
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Mailbox 14
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Contact
Phone: 617-496-4843
Fax: 617-495-4297
Email: sarah_sewall@harvard.edu
Sarah Sewall

Profile

Sarah Sewall teaches courses on U.S. foreign policy and humanitarian issues in war. A pioneer in the field of civilian protection, she helped revise U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, advised ISAF operations in Afghanistan, and led the first comprehensive operational analysis of U.S. efforts to reduce civilian casualties. She created the Mass Atrocities Response Operations (MARO) Project to develop a concept of operations for halting genocide (now joint U.S. doctrine) and train military commands. Dr. Sewall directed the Obama Transition review of all national security agencies in 2008 and was a senior foreign policy advisor on the 2008 presidential campaign. During the Clinton Administration, she served as the inaugural Deputy Assistant Secretary for Peacekeeping in the Department of Defense. She previously served for six years as the Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell. Dr. Sewall serves on the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, the board of Oxfam America, and the board of the Center for Naval Analyses. 

Courses

Spring

  • IGA-335 Values, Interests, and the Crafting of U.S. Foreign Policy

Media Expertise

Sarah Sewall welcomes media inquiries on the following subjects:

Additional experts may be found by clicking on each subject listed. You may contact faculty directly or if you need assistance contact the Communications Office at 617-495-1115.

Research

For a complete list of faculty citations from 2001 - present, please visit the Harvard Kennedy School Research Report Online.

Selected Publication Citations:

  • Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles
    • Lewis, Larry, MG (Ret) Geoffrey Lambert, and Sarah Sewall. "Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines: Civilian Harm and the Indirect Approach." Prism 4.3 (June 2012).
  • Books
    • Sewall, Sarah, Dwight Raymond, and Sally Chin. Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook. Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, 2010.
  • Commentary
    • Sewall, Sarah, and Anthony Zinni. "The Military Interventions We Don’t Plan For — Those to Protect Civilians." Washington Post, April 22, 2011.
  • Research Papers/Reports
    • Sewall, Sarah, and John P. White. "Parameters of Partnership: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the 21st Century." The Harvard Kennedy School Project on Civil-Military Relations, 2009.