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

During the 2012 calendar year, Sarah Sewall will be visiting as Minerva Chair at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. She is a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and is the founder and faculty director of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) Project. In 2010, she led a seminal study for the U.S. military on efforts to reduce civilian casualties. Dr. Sewall directed the Obama Transition's National Security Agency Review process in 2008. During the Clinton Administration, she served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. From 1983-1996, she was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell. In addition to the MARO Planning Handbook, her more recent publications include Parameters of Partnership: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the 21st Century (2009) and the introduction to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual (2007). She is a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, the Center for Naval Analyses' Defense Advisory Committee, and the board of Oxfam America. She graduated from Harvard College and received her doctorate from Oxford University.

Courses

Fall

  • IGA-335 Human Rights and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

Not Offered

  • IGA-221 American Warfare and the Humanitarian Ethic: Law, Norms, and Practice

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
    • Sewall, Sarah. "America after the Elections: A Strategy of Conservation." Survival 50.5 (October 2008): 79-98.
  • Book Chapters
    • Sewall, Sarah. "NATO and Complex Operations: The Challenge of Responding to Mass Atrocity." Complex Operations: NATO at War and On the Margins of War. Ed. Christopher M. Schnaubelt. NATO Defense College, 2010, 115-134.
    • Sewall, Sarah. "From Prevention to Response: Using Military Force to Oppose Mass Atrocities." Mass Atrocity Crimes: Preventing Future Outrages. Ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Brookings Institution Press, 2010, 159-174.
    • Sewall, Sarah. Ethics. Understanding Counterinsurgency: Doctrine, Operations, and Challenges. Ed. Thomas Rid and Thomas Keaney. Routledge, 2010.
    • Sewall, Sarah. "Leading Warriors in the Long War." Military Leadership: In Pursuit of Excellence. Ed. William E. Rosenbach. Westview Press, 2009, 121-132.
  • 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.
    • Sewall, Sarah, and John P. White. "The Civil-Military Challenge." Boston Globe, January 29, 2009.
  • Magazine and Newspaper Articles
    • Sewall, Sarah. "Do The Right Thing: A Genocide Policy That Works." Boston Review. September/October 2009.