skip to Main Content
Photo: Annette Hornischer

Daniel Benjamin is the president of the American Academy in Berlin.

Prior to his Academy appointment, Benjamin was the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. Before he arrived at Dartmouth, in 2013, he served as Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the US Department of State from 2009-2012.

Benjamin was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies and director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. He has also been a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. He spent more than five years on the National Security Council staff in the 1990s, where he served first as foreign-policy speechwriter and special assistant to President Bill Clinton and later as director for transnational threats.

Benjamin has written extensively on US foreign policy, terrorism, and international affairs. He is co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror (2002), which was awarded the Arthur Ross Prize of the Council on Foreign Relations and named a 2002 New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Best Book. He also co-authored The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right (2005), a Washington Post and Financial Times Best Book of the Year and a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, New York Review of Books, Politico, and many other publications.

Benjamin began his career as a journalist and was Germany bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and Germany correspondent for TIME. He received a master’s degree from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. He is a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, as well as the advisory boards of several NGOs.

To reach Daniel Benjamin, please contact executive assistant Kerstin Apel:
ka(at)americanacademy.de
Phone: +49 (030) 804 83 102

Recent Articles and Interviews

Fears grow that overseas targeted killing by states is on the rise

“What concerns me is the slide of more and more governments into committing violence extraterritorially,” Academy President Daniel Benjamin tells the Washington Post. “The fraying of the international community,” he said, has contributed to a “rise of states that are prepared to use violence, take chances and violate norms.” Published: September 23, 2023

25. Geburtstag der American Academy: Daniel Kehlmann, Amy Gutmann und die neuen Stipendiaten feiern in Berlin

Große Stipendiaten wie Arthur Miller machten die Academy zu einer angesehenen Institution. Zum Jubiläum kamen viele berühmte Gäste an den Wannsee. Published: September 14, 2023

„Trump selbst hat gesagt, dass er wie Churchill schaut“

Donald Trump musste sich den Behörden im Bundesstaat Georgia stellen. Daniel Benjamin von der American Academy Berlin kommentiert das historische Foto. Published: August 25, 2023
Back To Top