Robert Rakove was a National Fellow for the 2013-14 academic year.

He has worked as a visiting assistant professor of history at Colgate University and a visiting lecturer at Old Dominion University. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the United States Centre at the University of Sydney. He became a Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) affiliate in May 2012. He is in the process of completing his first book, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He has held fellowships from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2008.