Brent Durbin is Associate Professor of Government at Smith College, where he teaches courses in U.S. foreign policy, international relations, strategic intelligence, and the politics of information. He is also co-director of the Bridging the Gap Project, which promotes connections between scholars and the broader foreign policy community. Along with three colleagues, Durbin will devote his Berggruen Fellowship to researching strategies for advancing liberal goals such as human rights, self-determination, and competition in world characterized by weak institutions and retreating liberal leadership. Durbin’s previous research centers on the political and organizational dynamics of U.S. national security, with a particular focus on the CIA. His book The CIA and the Politics of U.S. Intelligence Reform was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. With support from a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, Durbin is spending 2018-19 at UC Berkeley’s Information School and Center for Long-term Cybersecurity studying the social and political implications of Big Data.