The 2024 Annual Leeke-Shaw Lecture on International Affairs will now be virtual! Join us Thursday, December 5th at 12:00-1:00pm. The lecturer will be Claude Berube, PhD, FRHistS dicussing the US Navy in the Pacific during WWII and today. Link to the lecture can be found below! https://ow.ly/TvqZ50Ul2tZ

Join us to listen to Claude Berube, PhD, FRHistS, discuss the United States Navy and the buildup to World War II. His discussion is entitled "The Criteria for Naval Victory in the Pacific: WW2 and Today".

Dr. Claude Berube wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Navy during Andrew Jackson's presidency. He was a 2004 Brookings Institution LEGIS Fellow and a 2010 Maritime Security Studies Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He has worked on political campaigns, as an analyst and team leader at the Office of Naval Intelligence, and as a defense contractor for Naval Sea Systems Command and the Office of Naval Research. He served on Capitol Hill three times in the House and Senate including as the national security fellow for US Senator Susan Collins in 2004.

He taught for two decades both a military officer and civilian in the Political Science and History Departments at the United States Naval Academy where his courses included American Government, Terrorism, Campaigns & Elections, Intelligence & National Security, Maritime Security Challenges, Naval History, and Emergent Naval Warfare. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Naval War College and the Institute of World Politics. He established the naval history podcast “Preble Hall” in 2019 which he hosted for four years.

He retired as a Commander from the U.S. Navy Reserve after serving for 24 years, including ten on active duty. He served on active-duty assignments in Europe, at the Office of Naval Intelligence, and as Deputy Director of Intelligence with Joint Task Force Guantanamo. He deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2004-2005 with Expeditionary Strike Group Five.

He is a senior editor for the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks and the author or co-author of several books including “A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution,” “On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era,” “Rickover Uncensored,” “Congress: Games and Strategies,” and “Maritime Private Security Market Responses to Piracy, Terrorism, and Waterborne Security Risks in the 21st Century.” He is also the author of a fiction series focused on maritime issues and China (“Pariah,” “Privateer,” and “The Philippine Pact.”) He was the 2018 of The Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement. In 2024, he was elected as a Fellow to the Royal Historical Society.

He is a native of Lewiston, Maine and recently moved back to the state where he is working on his next book and is the owner and principal of Seaward Strategies LLC.