2024-2025 Postdoctoral fellowship application now open
2024-2025 Reagan visiting fellows
Daniel Samet
George P. Shultz Fellow
dsamet@reaganfoundation.org
Dr. Daniel J. Samet is the Ronald Reagan Institute's George P. Shultz Fellow. His research examines American defense policy toward Israel during the Cold War era. He is currently turning his just-defended dissertation into a book manuscript on the same topic.
Before coming to the Ronald Reagan Institute, Daniel was a 2023–2024 America in the World Consortium Pre-Doctoral Fellow at at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He was also a Graduate Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, a Graduate Fellow at the Rumsfeld Foundation, and a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Daniel previously worked for the Office of Senator Tom Cotton, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy.
His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, National Review, Commentary, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a B.A. magna cum laude in History and French and Francophone Studies from Davidson College, where he was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa and competed in cross country and track and field.
Nate Trimble
ntrimble@reaganfoundation.org
Dr. Nate Trimble is a historian of U.S. foreign relations in the 20th Century, with related interests in Cold War American politics and international relations. Prior to arriving at the Reagan Institute, Nate received a PhD from Vanderbilt University and an MA from King's College London.
Nate's current book project, Presidential Power: Navigating Armed Primacy and Congressional Conflict, 1977-1987, examines how U.S. Presidents pursued a strategy of armed primacy which assumed that the U.S. needed to maintain a preponderance of power over the U.S.S.R to underwrite a democratic and liberal pro-Western international order. Consequently, the conflict between the President and Congress over the use of military force from 1977-1987 resulted in ways to circumvent Congress and expand Presidential power.
In addition to his academic career, Nate is also a career Intelligence Officer in the US Army. Nate has served numerous combat deployments overseas and specializes in intelligence collection in support of CT operations. Beginning in Fall 2028, Nate will serve as a faculty member at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Joshua Tait
jtait@reaganfoundation.org
Joshua Tait is a historian of American conservatism and broader right-wing intellectual history. He holds a Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has contributed chapters to Key Thinkers of the Radical Right, The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, and The Princeton History of American Political Thought (forthcoming). He has published widely on these topics in venues such as the Washington Post, The Bulwark, The National Interest, and Tablet, and has been quoted in outlets including Vox and the New York Times.
2023-2024 Reagan visiting fellows
Samuel Beroud
Dr. Samuel Beroud is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute. He graduated from the University of Geneva. Samuel also studied at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Columbia University, and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. Before joining the institute, he worked at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. Trained as an economic historian, he is a specialist in geoeconomics. His current book project, titled “Crisis as Opportunity: Western Economic Relations and the Resurgence of US Hegemony, 1969-1989,” will demonstrate how the US administration took advantage of the monetary and energy crises of this period to prevent the creation of an independent bloc in Western Europe that could have undermined the US's dominant position.
Christian Ruth
Dr. Christian Ruth is a historian of American foreign relations. His book manuscript, One-Third Rich and Two-Thirds Hungry: Development and Neoliberalism in the Late Cold War, examines how foreign aid and global socioeconomic development were changed after the Vietnam War. He is also working on a chapter on basic human needs strategies in aid and ethics, and a second manuscript on the effects of modern day monarchist movements on political extremism.
Before he arrived at the Reagan Institute, Christian was a lecturer on foreign relations, American history, and global affairs for Marist College, and SUNY Albany. He received his BA and MA in history from the University of Kentucky, and a PhD in history from SUNY at Albany.
2022-2023 Reagan Visiting Fellows
Dr. Gibson is a political scientist who studies American political institutions. He is particularly interested in how partisan incentives affect policymaking in the executive and legislative branches. Prior to coming to the Institute, he was a Postgraduate Research Associate and Lecturer at Princeton University, where he also received his Ph.D. and M.A. in the Department of Politics.
He is working to convert his dissertation, Presidential Use of Centralization and Politicization, winner of APSA’s 2022 George E Edwards III Award for best dissertation on executive politics, into a completed book manuscript. This book explores modern presidential use of White House staff and political appointees to influence policymaking within the executive branch, incorporating quantitative, theoretical, and archival perspectives. Beginning in Fall 2023 he will serve as an assistant professor at Elizabethtown College.
Dr. William Chou is a historian on US-Japanese security and trade relations. His book manuscript, Material Ambassadors: Postwar Japanese Consumer Exports and the Cold War US-Japanese Relationship, examines Japan's commercial exports and how they reconfigured bilateral security, business, and cultural relations during the Cold War. He is also currently working on a chapter on US-Japanese trade and technology exchange in the 1970s and 1980s for an edited volume on 20th century American capitalism.
Prior to arriving at Reagan, William was an AWC Fellow at the Clements Center (UT-Austin), a Smithsonian Fellow at the National Museum for American History, and a Fulbright-Hays Fellow at the University of Tokyo. Previously, he also worked as a researcher at Institute for Defense Analyses and the Army's Center for Military History on issues concerning intelligence integration, counterinsurgency, and defense planning.
He received his B.A. in history from Yale, a PhD in history from Ohio State, and studied Japanese at the Inter-University Center in Yokohama. He is a former Jeopardy! champion.
2020-2021 Reagan Visiting Fellows
Frances Tilney Burke
Ms. Burke will receive her Ph.D. in international relations at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, where she is writing on the history of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, and was the recipient of the Smith Richardson Foundation World Politics & Statecraft Fellowship. She is a historian of U.S. foreign relations and expert in international security. She earned her M.A. in Law and Diplomacy, also from the Fletcher School, an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies from Oxford University, and an A.B. in U.S. History and Literature from Harvard University. From 2019-2020, she was a visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focused on foreign and defense policy, and especially policy issues affecting military families.
As the George P. Shultz Fellow at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, Ms. Burke will work reassessing President Reagan’s legacy of democratization in Latin America. She is particularly keen to work with the Reagan Library archivists on the president’s “freedom agenda” papers, memoranda, and speeches specific to the Western Hemisphere.
Prior to her academic work at The Fletcher School, Ms. Burke was a special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (twice) during the Bush administration, a counterterrorism analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and, later, a foreign affairs specialist in the Office of Detainee Policy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Frances served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and was selected as a “Next Generation National Security Fellow” at the Center for a New American Security (2011-12). She has been an active Army family volunteer leader with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the 25th Infantry Division, and the 7th Infantry Division.
Her commentary has appeared in the Weekly Standard, the National Review, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, and War on the Rocks.
Frances is married to an active-duty Army officer in his 26th year of service. They have four children, ages 12, 11, 8, and 1.
Chris Campbell
Dr Campbell is a historian of the Cold War, US foreign policy, and US-Russian relations. Campbell is interested in the role of ideology in foreign policy and exploring the intersection of religion, human rights, nationalism and foreign affairs. He earned his PhD and MSc in Russian, Central and East European Studies from the University of Glasgow and holds a BA Hons in History and Politics from the University of Strathclyde. He has written on religion and nationalism in the Soviet republics, and sits on the board of the Keston Institute, which oversees the Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society at Baylor University.
Dr Campbell is currently working to turn his doctoral thesis, entitled “Are We Doing Enough?” US Foreign Policy and the Soviet Nationalities 1977-1984, into a book manuscript. The thesis examined efforts by the Carter and Reagan administrations to exploit simmering nationalist tensions within the Soviet republics and harness them to advance US Cold War objectives. His book project will expand this thesis to trace US policy towards the Soviet nationalities and republics from the late 1970s to the collapse of the USSR. The core of the project will explore President Reagan’s deeply-held belief in national self-determination and religious freedom for Soviet minorities, and how this tied into his wider strategy towards the Soviet Union.
