Steven Simon *83 SPIA
Researcher, Writer, Teacher
Distinguished Fellow and Visiting Lecturer, Dartmouth College
Steven Simon, a distinguished fellow at Dartmouth, previously was the Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow in International Affairs at MIT. In government, he served as the U.S. National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the Clinton White House and for the Middle East in the Obama White House, as well as in senior positions at the Department of State. Outside of government, Simon was a principal of Good Harbor LLC in Abu Dhabi and led the Middle East office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Before this, he was deputy director of the IISS in London. Simon managed classified projects at the RAND Corporation and was the Hasib Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He taught at Princeton, Dartmouth and Amherst and held fellowships at Brown, Oxford and the American Academy in Berlin. His latest book, “Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East” (2023), was judged “brilliantly written,” (Financial Times), “magisterial,” (Foreign Affairs) and a 2023 notable book (New Yorker).