A prominent military official who advises strategies for the war in Iraq will be advising Ohio State history students in the fall. Col. Peter Mansoor, the executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, has been hired by OSU’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies and the department of history.
In September 2008, Mansoor will begin teaching military history classes, conduct research and help organize speaking events and conferences on national security studies.
Some Mershon Center staff members said they feel Mansoor’s faculty position will greatly benefit students.
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“I think everyone is excited to get someone of Colonel Mansoor’s caliber,” said Cathy Becker, public relations coordinator for the Mershon Center. “He’s coming with so much experience as an actual top U.S. military official in Iraq, and not just a professor who has only done military research.”
Mansoor will serve as the next Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History, succeeding Allan Millett, who is now the Stephen Ambrose Professor of Military History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans.
According to a Mershon Center press release, he currently serves as a key advisor to Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, where he assists with strategic planning for the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Mansoor was selected in the fall of 2006 to serve on a “Council of Colonels” that assisted the Joint Chiefs of Staff in reassessing the strategy for the Iraq War, which became the “surge” strategy currently being employed in Iraq.
Peter Hahn, chair of the department of history, said he is confident that students will welcome Mansoor with open minds.
“He is so accomplished that I hope people will not always associate his position in the war with him as a person,” Hahn said.
According to the press release, Mansoor has more than 25 years of military service and a long record of academic experience. He was an assistant professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. and has conducted research on World War II and counterinsurgency operations. He has also written two books: “The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-45” and his recently completed “Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq.”
Mansoor graduated first in his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1982, and received master’s in 1992 and a doctoral degree in military history in 1995, both from OSU.
Heather Hope can be reached at [email protected].
