Dr. Montgomery ‘Mitzy’ McFate is a professor at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Formerly, she was the Senior Social Scientist for the US Army’s Human Terrain System, which she helped develop from a ‘good idea’ to a $150 million dollar-a-year Army program. She has held positions at RAND and the Institute for Defense Analyses and the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research, where she was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award by the Secretary of the Navy. She has served on the Army Science Board and the Defense Science Board, and was an instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Dr. McFate received a BA from UC Berkeley, a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She is the author and/or editor of Dr. Seuss & National Security (Rowman Littlefield, 2023); Considering Anthropology and Small Wars (Routledge, 2020); Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2018); Social Science Goes to War (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Pax Britannica: British Counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, 1969-1982 (Wilberforce Codex, 2014). Her articles have appeared in such journals as Defense and Security Analysis, Orbis, Military Review, Journal of Information Warfare, Journal of Conflict Studies, Journal of Small Wars & Insurgencies, and Joint Forces Quarterly. She was a key contributor to US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.