Senior Directors
Naazneen H. Barma is the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Professor of Public Policy, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, and the founding Director of the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is one of the founders and a Senior Director of Bridging the Gap. Barma is a political scientist whose work spans topics including peacebuilding, foreign aid, the political economy of development, and global governance, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and the Pacific. She is currently working on a collaborative project on transnational statebuilding networks as a major form of contemporary multilateral engagement. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Minerva Research Initiative, and the Berggruen Institute, among others. Barma is, most recently, author of The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States (Cambridge University Press 2017) and co-editor of The Political Economy Reader: Contending Perspectives and Contemporary Debates (Taylor & Francis 2022). She was a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School from 2000–2010 and previously a development practitioner at the World Bank, where she worked for six years on governance and institutional reform in the East Asia Pacific Region.
Brent Durbin is a Bridging the Gap Senior Director and an Associate Professor of Government at Smith College, where he teaches courses in U.S. foreign policy, strategic intelligence, international relations, and the politics of data. He also directs Smith’s Jean Picker Semester-in-Washington Program. Durbin’s research centers on the political dynamics of U.S. national security, and on the political and social effects of new data technologies. His book The CIA and the Politics of U.S. Intelligence Reform was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Durbin has been a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow, and has held research fellowships at the Berggruen Institute, UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, and other institutions. Prior to joining the Smith faculty, Durbin taught in the public policy program at Stanford University. He also has served as press secretary for U.S. Senator Patty Murray, and as an adviser and senior staff member on several campaigns for U.S. Congress.
Jordan Tama is Provost Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. His research examines the politics, processes, and tools of U.S. foreign policy. His most recent book is Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age (Oxford University Press, 2024). He has also published three other books and many journal articles, policy reports, and articles in major newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Politico, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. He has served as a senior aide on Capitol Hill, a foreign policy speechwriter, and a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor. He has also been selected as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, a Woodrow Wilson Center Residential Fellow, and a Truman National Security Project Fellow. He received a B.A. from Williams College, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Jim Goldgeier is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17. He has held appointments or fellowships at the Library of Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Wilson Center, the German Marshall Fund, the Hoover Institution, and the National Security Council staff. He is a past president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs. Goldgeier is a senior adviser to the Bridging the Gap initiative, and he serves as a co-editor for the Oxford University Press Bridging the Gap book series. He is chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee, and he serves as a member of the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. His most recent books are Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War (co-edited with Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson) and Foreign Policy Careers for PhDs: A Practical Guide to a World of Possibilities (co-authored with Tamara Cofman Wittes).
Bruce W. Jentleson is William Preston Few Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science at Duke
University as well as Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Non-Resident
Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
He has served in a number of US foreign policy positions including Senior Advisor to the State Department Policy, Planning Director (2009-11), and a senior foreign policy advisor to the 2000 Al Gore presidential campaign. His most recent book is Economic Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Career awards include the 2018 American Political Science Association (APSA) International Security Section Joseph J. Kruzel Award for Distinguished Public Service; the 2020 Duke University Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award; and the 1985 APSA Harold D. Lasswell Doctoral Dissertation Award for his doctoral dissertation. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He was a longtime Co-Director and is now a Senior Advisor for Bridging the Gap.