Speaker for October 2nd, 2003 Young India Event

Dr. Johnston is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has served in senior positions in government, business, academia, and the military. Among his government assignments, he has been deputy assistant secretary of the navy (manpower); director of policy planning and management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and planning officer with the President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. He has taught courses in international affairs and security at Harvard and was the founder and director of the university’s Executive Program in National and International Security. Dr. Johnston served for ten years in the submarine service and, at the age of 27, was the youngest officer in the navy to qualify for command of a nuclear submarine.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Johnston served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition to other duties, he chaired the Center’s Preventive Diplomacy Program and directed the CSIS project on Religion and Conflict Resolution. In this latter capacity, he was co-editor and principal author of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994), a path-breaking work now in its thirteenth printing and second foreign language translation. He also edited and was principal author of Foreign Policy into the 21st Century: the U.S. Leadership Challenge (CSIS, 1996) and Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford University Press, 2003).