CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C227
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

[email protected]
(650) 723-6840 (voice)
(650) 724-5683 (fax)

Research Interests
U.S. responses to changing security threats and terrorism; national security budgets, policies, and institutions

Paul Stockton was a senior research scholar at CISAC until June 2009. He was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs on April 28, 2009. 

He was formerly the associate provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and was the founding director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. His research focuses on how U.S. security institutions respond to changes in the threat (including the rise of terrorism), and the interaction of Congress and the Executive branch in restructuring national security budgets, policies and institutional arrangements. Stockton also serves as co-teacher of the CISAC Honors Program, which assists Stanford seniors in writing theses on international security.

Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in August 1990. From 1995 until 2000, he served as director of NPS' Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, he founded and served as the acting dean of NPS' School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed associate provost in 2001.

Stockton is co-editor of Homeland Security, a graduate text to be published by Oxford University Press. Stockton serves on the editorial review board of Homeland Security Affairs, the quarterly journal he helped establish in 2005. His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security, and Strategic Survey. He is co-editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). He has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

From 1986-1989 Stockton served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Stockton was Senator Moynihan's personal representative on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was principal advisor to the senator on defense, intelligence, counter narcotics policy and foreign affairs. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by CISAC. During his graduate studies at Harvard, he served as a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Stockton received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1986.