Rebecca Burgess is senior editor of American Purpose, acting director of the Classics in Strategy and Diplomacy project, and an SME consultant for the George W. Bush Institute’s Veterans and Military Families program. A visiting fellow in national security and veterans studies at The Independent Women’s Forum, she is a 2021 National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She’s an Advisory Board Member of Combined Arms and of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, and a SME for the NEH Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education project. Additionally, she serves on the Reader Review Board of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Journal. Rebecca researches the political and social institutions of democratic governance, including civics and national security, civil-military relations and the military life cycle, veterans and politics, and theories of political decay, war, empire and expansion. She has two-plus decades of combined public policy, administrative, and academic experience, holding the position most recently as a research fellow both in Foreign and Defense Policy and Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. A Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in politics at the University of Dallas, her work has been solicited for congressional testimonies, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Military Times, Newsweek, The American Interest, The Strategy Bridge, and War on the Rocks, among others.