Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D.
Director, Homeland Defense Fellowship Program and Associate Professor
Department of Conflict and War Studies

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science, Corvinus University, Budapest
• M.A., Budapest University of Economics
• B.A., London University

Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., was born in the United Kingdom to parents who escaped Communism during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He is an internationally recognized authority on issues of national security, irregular warfare, terrorism and democratization, having worked in government and the private and NGO sectors in Europe and the United States. A graduate of the University of London and Corvinus University, Budapest, he was Kokkalis Fellow at Harvard'’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and holds a Ph.D. in political science.

In the past, Gorka has acted as a consultant to the RAND Corporation’'s Washington Office, and was the first Director of the Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security. After September 11, 2001, he spent four years as an adjunct professor for Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany. He has published in excess of 150 monographs, book chapters and articles, many for the JANES Group. With David Kilcullen, he co-authored, "“Who’s Winning the Battle for Narrative? Al-Qaida versus the United States and its Allies,"” in Influence Warfare, Praeger, 2009.

Gorka advises and briefs at the highest levels to the U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and NATO. He lectures frequently at institutions such as USMA West Point, the National Counterterrorism Center and the School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth, and the FBI. He served in the British Territorial Army, Intelligence and Security Group (V), is a founding member of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs, and is a member of the Strategic Advisers’ Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States. Gorka is a recipient of the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award from the U.S. Special Operations Command for outstanding service to the DoD's International Combating Terrorism Program. He is a contributing co-editor for McGraw Hill's textbook, Toward a Grand Strategy Against Terrorism (2010).

For the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Gorka testified before Congress.