MACON — Mercer University alumna Mackenzie Eaglen returns to campus to deliver a lecture on national defense on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Medical School Auditorium. Eaglen is now a research fellow for national security studies with the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, a national conservative think tank.
Eaglen has spent her time since graduating from Mercer as a political science major in 1999 developing her expertise in national defense policy and budgeting, earning a master’s in national security studies from Georgetown University in 2001. She specializes in defense strategy, military readiness and the defense budget as research fellow for national security studies at the Heritage Foundation. Eaglen, a policy expert attached to Heritage’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, also focuses on the defense industrial base and the size and structure of the nation’s armed forces.
In 2010, Eaglen served as a staff member of the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission established to assess the Pentagon’s major defense strategy.
Her commentary and analysis have appeared in major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, in military-focused publications such as Defense News and Army Times and in journals such as Armed Forces Journal, Proceedings, National Defense, Ripon Society Forum and Military Technology. Eaglen also is a regular contributor to GlobalSecurity.org’s SitRep and NRO’s The Corner.
Before joining Heritage in 2006, Eaglen was principal defense adviser to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee. Eaglen previously served as legislative assistant to Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.). She served for more than two years at the Pentagon as a Presidential Management Fellow. She researched and analyzed defense resources and budgeting, strategic planning, Iraqi reconstruction efforts and the U.S. defense industrial base. She wrote speeches for Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff following the Sept. 11 attacks. Earlier, she was a national security analyst at the Association of the United States Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,200 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on major campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah and at three regional academic centers across the state. Mercer is affiliated with two teaching hospitals — Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah and the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. The University operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. For more information, visit www.mercer.edu.
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