John A. Nagl

Archive Biography: John A Nagl is the ninth Headmaster of The Haverford School. A retired Army officer with service in both Iraq wars, he helped write the 2006 edition of FM 3-24 and is the author of the forthcoming book Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤBiography from LinkedIn: I have the privilege of learning from and teaching those dedicated to the security of the United States. A retired Army officer, I saw combat in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I was the inaugural Minerva Research Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, studying and writing about the influence of culture on warfare; I previously taught at West Point and at Georgetown University and currently serve as a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University, teaching a Masters' degree course on Special Forces and Irregular Warfare. I serve on the Board of Advisors at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington DC think tank of which I was the second president from 2009 until 2012, and am a Fellow of the Irregular Warfare Initiative in 2023. I helped write the 2006 US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. I am particularly interested in building adaptive learning organizations; my Oxford University doctoral dissertation on the subject was published under the title "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" (University of Chicago Press, 2005). My book on the wars of the past twenty years is titled "Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice" (Penguin, 2014). I served as the ninth Head of the Haverford School outside Philadelphia, leading an organization dedicated to the education and character development of boys and young men.