Daniel Benjamin

Daniel Benjamin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program and the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. Prior to joining the Dickey Center in 2012, Benjamin served as ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department. In that position, he was the principal advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on counterterrorism. Benjamin was the longest serving coordinator for counterterrorism since that position was created, and during his tenure, the Office of the Coordinator was elevated to become the Bureau of Counterterrorism.

Benjamin has written extensively on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, and international affairs. He co-wrote “The Age of Sacred Terror” (Floris Books, 2002), which was awarded the Arthur Ross Prize by the Council on Foreign Relations, the largest American prize for a work on international affairs, and was named a The New York Times notable book and a The Washington Post best book of 2002. “The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right” (Times Books, 2005), which he also co-authored, was named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Financial Times, and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is the editor of two books, “Europe 2030” (Brookings Institution Press, 2010) and “America and the World in the Age of Terror: A New Landscape in International Relations” (Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2005).

Benjamin began his career as a journalist and held positions as Germany bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and Germany correspondent for Time magazine. He holds degrees from Oxford, where he was a Marshall scholar, and Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate work, graduating magna cum laude.