The news is out that Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll will be my next boss succeeding Ted Halstead at the New America Foundation.
Coll is one of the world’s leading experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan and can get into the weeds with anyone on those issues — and gets the big picture need to tilt foreign policy and national security work towards the empirical and pragmatic rather than positions fashioned mostly by ideology or inertia.
I would have written about this sooner — given my blogging insider access — but this is one of those points where discretion about the internal game needed to be maintained for professional reasons. I was one of the early builders and architects of New America that joined Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, and Michael Lind in building out the organization. It has been a great ride so far.
Steve Coll should be a great new leader of the New America Foundation and will help position the institution for its “next phase”. The foreign policy and economic team I work with looks forward to exploiting Steve Coll’s sizzle as much as possible (partly joking Steve).
On other fronts, I’m in Providence, Rhode Island today — enjoying the city despite dreary weather.
— Steve Clemons
11 comments on “Steve Coll to head New America Foundation”