About LRS

My name is Leslie Rogne Schumacher. I write, speak, and teach about history, foreign policy/IR, intelligence studies, and leadership. My research is on Mediterranean and MENA relations, migration and refugee studies, Orientalism and its critics, defense challenges in the EU and Middle East, and the conflicts in national security over public diplomacy, confidentiality, and intelligence-gathering. Much of my work has centered on the concept of the East-West relationship and its related international and military dynamics.

I serve in a variety of positions. First, I serve in several positions at Harvard University. I am an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (link), as well as a Faculty Affiliate in HKS’s Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs (link). I am also an Associate in Harvard’s History Department (link). Second, I frequently teach as a Sessional Lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (link). Third, I am a Regional Scholar in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University (link). Finally, I am a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (link). Before coming to Harvard, I served as Director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence & Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Wells College. From 2016 to 2019, I was the David H. Burton Fellow & Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where I taught Middle Eastern, European, and global history.

I live in Cambridge, MA with my wife Kaja J. Tally-Schumacher, who is Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture and Environmental History at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (link). I have also taught at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, Hamline University, Germantown Academy, Tompkins Cortland Community College, and the Sant’Anna Institute in Sorrento, Italy. In Fall 2009 I was a Visiting Research Student at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, and in Spring 2012 I was a Visiting Student Fellow in the History Department at Harvard University. In May 2017, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in honor of my work with Philadelphia’s Catholic archdiocese on refugee affairs. In February 2024, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in honor of my book on the Eastern Question in nineteenth-century British diplomacy, society, and politics (see below).

I have a passion for writing and have published in a variety of venues. I recently published a book on the Eastern Question in Britain and Ottoman reaction and reform in the Middle East, titled The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain: Democracy and Diplomacy, Orientalism and Empire (link). I have provided policy expertise on current political, economic, and security challenges in the Mediterranean Sea to such venues as Transatlantic Policy Quarterly (link) and War on the Rocks (link). I have also contributed timely articles on: the role of the Middle East in the rise of European integration theory, in the Journal of European Studies (link); the legacy of Poland’s first post-communist president, Lech Wałęsa, in The New Islander (link); and, first, the foreign policy roots of the Tea Party and, second, historical precedents for the Edward Snowden affair, in History News Network (link 1, link 2). My JES article is frequently cited as a foundational piece on contemporary Middle East studies debates, including as part of the standard curriculum at Stockholm University (link). I have published a number of book chapters, including one on imperialism in the Eastern Mediterranean (link), one on the 1890s Armenian Massacres (link), and a forthcoming one on Italian refugees in British-controlled Malta in the early 19th century.

I provide service for many organizations, journals, and initiatives. I sit on the review panels of the Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, Turkish Historical Review, Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, Romance, Revolution & Reform, Open Military Studies, Refugee Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Third World Quarterly, the Journal of Early Modern History, the Journal of Tourism History, Victorian Network, Studia Historyczne, Britain and the World, Akropolis: Journal of Hellenic Studies, and the Marmara Journal of European Studies.  For the last two, I also serve on their editorial boards. I am also a member of the International Association of Jesuit Universities’ Migration initiative. A champion high school debater and former debate team head coach, I am the university member on the board of the Pennsylvania State High School Speech and Debate League. I also am the Academic Director of the Senior Leadership Program of the Great Books Summer Program at Haverford College (link).