Experts

Philip Zelikow

White Burkett Miller Emeritus Professor of History

Fast Facts

  • Former Miller Center director
  • Executive Director, 9/11 Commission
  • Elected member, American Academy of Diplomacy
  • Expertise in American foreign policy, military history, European military history, Cuban missile crisis

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism
  • Domestic Affairs
  • Governance
  • Congress
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Virginia, where he has also served as dean of the Graduate School and director of the Miller Center. His scholarly work has focused on critical episodes in American and world history. 

He was a trial and appellate lawyer and then a career diplomat before taking academic positions at Harvard, then Virginia. Before and during his academic career, he has served at all levels of American government. His federal service during five administrations has included positions in the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon. His last full-time government position was as the counselor of the Department of State, a deputy to Secretary Condoleezza Rice. 

He directed a small and short-lived federal agency, the 9/11 Commission. He also directed an earlier bipartisan commission on election reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, that led to successful passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. More recently he was managing director of “Rework America,” a landmark project on American economic opportunity in the digital age, organized by the Markle Foundation. 

He is one of the few individuals ever to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Boards for presidents of both parties, in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has also been a member of the Defense Policy Board for Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and a member of the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2020, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Featured Publications

The Road Less Traveled
The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917

Philip Zelikow

To Build a Better World
To Build a Better World

Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice

Suez Deconstructed
Suez Deconstructed: An Interactive Study in Crisis, War, and Peacemaking

Philip Zelikow

9/11
The 9/11 Commission Report

Philip Zelikow

Philip Zelikow News Feed

Bloomberg Opinion
Sept. 11 and the Post-Post-Cold War World
The anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is in a sort of transition phase. The wounds are no longer fresh after 18 years, but the terrible day is not yet enshrined in the deep historical past. That makes it a good time to take stock of what’s been achieved in the fight against global terrorism, and what remains to be done. I can think of no better person to discuss this than Philip Zelikow. Now a professor of governance at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Zelikow had a long career inside government, rising to counselor of the State Department under President George W. Bush. But he’s best known for his role as executive director of the federal 9/11 Commission, and thus is the primary author of the commission’s report on the attacks.
Philip Zelikow Bloomberg Opinion
Texas National Security Review
To Regain Policy Competence: The Software of American Public Problem-Solving
American policymaking has declined over the past several decades, but it is something that can be regained. It is not ephemeral or lost to the mists of time. The skills needed to tackle public problem-solving are specific and cultural — and they are teachable.
Philip Zelikow Texas National Security Review
The Atlantic
The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad
At the national level, “policy work is increasingly being done by people with no training in it, and who don’t care about it, because they’re drawn into national politics purely as culture warriors,” I was told by Philip Zelikow, of the University of Virginia, who worked as a national-security official for both Presidents Bush. “There’s a fiction that mass politics is about policy.”
Philip Zelikow The Atlantic
Washington Post
Friction with China isn’t going away. The U.S. needs a better strategy.
Philip Zelikow, a former State Department official who teaches at the University of Virginia, warned that he sees “a one-in-three chance of major crisis over Taiwan in the next year or so.” The group pondered how the United States should react to a Chinese intervention, however unlikely.
Philip Zelikow The Washington Post
War on the Rocks
The Suez Crisis and the fog of diplomacy
In Suez Deconstructed, Philip Zelikow, a historian at the University of Virginia and former counselor of the Department of State, argues that students of strategy have as much to learn from Suez as its much-studied cousins. In making this case, Zelikow is joined by Ernest May, who was a venerated Harvard historian, and the Harvard Suez Team, a group of six scholars recruited to conduct research for the project. The authors began their work in the 1990s, but were interrupted, among other things, by Zelikow’s service in government and May’s death in 2009. Zelikow has returned to finish the book at an auspicious moment for examining the kind of war that Suez represents — a multi-power crisis, in which states of every size and strength play major roles.
Philip Zelikow War on the Rocks
The New York Times
In Divided Washington, Relief and Disappointment at Mueller’s Report
“The first impression of what the report said was the Barr letter,” Mr. Zelikow said, “and then a further news conference today. That has allowed the attorney general to shape the initial impressions and coverage surrounding this report for a month.”

Philip Zelikow The New York Times