Grant Rumley is the Meisel-Goldberger Senior Fellow and Director of the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East, where he specializes in military and security affairs in the Middle East.
From 2018 to 2021, Grant served in both the Trump and Biden administrations as an advisor for Middle East Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. While in OSD Middle East Policy, Grant served in multiple roles, including as deputy chief of staff, Syria director, Jordan director, and Israel director. In this capacity, Grant supported senior Pentagon leadership on key defense issues in the Middle East. He is the recipient of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Prior to joining OSD, Grant was a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where his research focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the co-author of The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas (Prometheus, 2017), the first English-language biography of the Palestinian leader. Prior to joining FDD, Grant was a visiting fellow at Mitvim: the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies.
Grant has testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among other publications, and his analysis has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Atlantic, NPR, and Politico, among other outlets.
Grant is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He has an M.A. in Middle East studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a B.A. in International Relations from Michigan State University, and has studied at the University of Alexandria, Egypt.
