Douglas M. Johnston
Senior Fellow Alumnus
Douglas M. Johnston, PhD is President and Founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD). He has served in various positions as a White House appointee and lectured at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was appointed a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum in 2006.
He is known for developing a new synergy for peacemaking based on the joint contributions of religion and politics, as articulated in his book Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994). Dr. Johnston’s hands-on experience in reconciliation and peacemaking reflects his deep interest in religion and conflict resolution stemming from his twenty-year involvement with the National Prayer Breakfast and his service on the board of the Washington Theological Consortium.
Dr. Johnston is a distinguished graduate of the US Naval Academy and holds a Masters degree in Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has a broad range of executive experience in government, academia and the military, starting with ten years in the submarine service where, at the age of 27, he was the youngest officer in the US Navy to qualify for command of a nuclear submarine.
Most recently, Dr. Johnston served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Among his other duties, he chaired the CSIS programs on maritime studies and on preventive diplomacy.
Among his assignments in government, Dr. Johnston was a planning officer in the President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, Director of Policy Planning and Management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Manpower). In academia, he taught international affairs and security at Harvard University and was the Founding Director of the Kennedy School’s Executive Program in National and International Security.
Dr. Johnston has edited and authored several books, including Foreign Policy into the 21st Century: The U.S. Leadership Challenge (CSIS, 1996) and Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena (2008)
• Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (2003)