He studies and writes about, among other things, constitutional government, conservatism and progressivism in the United States, liberal education, national security and law, and Middle East politics.

He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).

He is the editor of seven collections of essays on political ideas and institutions published by the Hoover Institution: Renewing the American Constitutional Tradition (2014); Future Challenges in National Security and Law (2010); The Future of American Intelligence (2005); Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (2005); Varieties of Conservatism in America (2004); Varieties of Progressivism in America (2004); and Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic (2003).

He is a contributor at RealClearPolitics, and has written hundreds of articles,essays and reviews on a range of subjects for a variety of publications, including The American Interest, American Political Science Review, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, First Things, Forbes.com, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, London Review of Books, National Journal, National Review, The New Criterion, The New Republic, Policy Review, Politico, The Public Interest, The Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, The Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal.

In addition to teaching regularly in the United States and Israel, Dr. Berkowitz has led seminars on the principles of freedom and the American constitutional tradition for students from Burma at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and for Korean students at Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

He taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at George Mason University School of Law from 1999 to 2006, and political philosophy in the department of government at Harvard University from 1990 to 1999.

He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University, an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.

Before his White House service, Pottinger spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York.

Auslin currently is the inaugural Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the Senior Advisor for Asia at the Halifax International Security Forum, and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Among previous positions, Auslin was an associate professor of history at Yale University and a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2018 and serves as the Vice Chairman of the Wilton Park USA Foundation. He was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Fulbright Scholar, a German Marshall Fund Marshall Memorial Fellow, an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, among other honors.

He recently learned that his books are banned by Chinese authorities.

From July 2018 to January 2021, Rayburn was the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria. In that post, he oversaw U.S. diplomatic activities concerning Syria, supervised more than 100 diplomats and civil servants across the Middle East and Europe, and, from November 2020 to January 2021, served as U.S. chief of mission for Syria. Until November 2020, Rayburn was also Deputy Assistant Secretary for Levant Affairs, responsible for implementing U.S. policy concerning Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. 

Before joining the State Department, Rayburn served 26 years as a U.S. Army officer, with his final assignment as senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon on the National Security Council staff in 2017-2018. Commissioned from West Point in 1992, Rayburn served in assignments in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the United States, including several deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia. As a field artillery officer, Rayburn served in the 1^st Armored Division from 1993-1996, during which he deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Intrinsic Action and to Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of NATO’s IFOR. After transferring into the military intelligence corps in 1997, Rayburn served at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and in the 4^th Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. He also served as a Balkans intelligence analyst at the EUCOM Joint Analysis Center, RAF Molesworth, in 1999-2000. Rayburn then taught history at West Point from 2002-2005 and served as an advisor to General John Abizaid at U.S. Central Command from 2005 to 2007. In 2007 he served on the Joint Strategic Assessment Team assembled by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad. From 2007 to 2011 he was a strategic intelligence advisor to General Petraeus in Iraq, Central Command (Tampa), and Afghanistan. From 2011 to 2012, Rayburn was a senior military fellow at the Institute of National Strategic Studies.

From 2013 to 2016 Rayburn directed the Army’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group, where he led the writing of a history of the Iraq war and assembled operational lessons to be drawn from the conflict. In 2018, the group’s work was published in the two-volume study The U.S. Army in the Iraq War, for which Rayburn was co-author and editor.

Rayburn holds an MA in History from Texas A&M University and an MS in Strategic Studies from the National War College.  He hails from Oklahoma and lives in Washington, DC with his family.