Human Security Project

H.R. McMaster

Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. At Stanford, he is also lecturer at the Graduate School of Business. He is the host of Today's Battlegrounds and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution.

McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the US Army for thirty-four years and as the twenty-fifth assistant to the U.S. president for national security affairs. As the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, McMaster designed the future army; and as commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, he oversaw training, education, and modernization for the Army’s infantry, armor, and cavalry force. He has commanded organizations in wartime including the Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force–Shafafiyat in Afghanistan; the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq; and Eagle Troop, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment in Operation Desert Storm.

McMaster holds a PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an assistant professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy. He is author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam; Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World; and At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. His many essays, articles, and book reviews on leadership, history, and the future of warfare have appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Free Press, The New York Times, and The Economist.

Guoguang Wu

Guoguang Wu is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy, including, in China studies, elite politics, national political institutions and policy making mechanisms, transition from communism, the politics of development, and China’s search for its position in the world, and, in comparative political economy, transition of capitalism with globalization, the birth of capitalism in comparative perspectives, the worldwide rise of the economic state, and the emergence of human security on global agenda.

Matt Pottinger

Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Pottinger served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy.

Before his White House service, Pottinger spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York. 

Elisa Zhai Autry

Research Fellow

Elisa Zhai Autry is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where she contributes to the Human Security Project, advancing security, liberty, and prosperity in authoritarian countries.

Previously, Dr. Autry served as principal policy advisor on Global China and East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State. As the bureau’s China expert and chief liaison for diplomatic affairs involving China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, she played a key role in shaping public diplomacy strategies and advancing US foreign policy objectives worldwide.

In this capacity, Dr. Autry advised senior leadership, led high-level diplomatic meetings and dialogues, oversaw over 150 exchange programs, coordinated communications with US embassies worldwide, facilitated interagency collaboration, trained new diplomats on China strategies, and guided the Department’s efforts to counter foreign malign influence through public outreach initiatives.

Dr. Autry also directed global China programming in the Department of State’s US Speaker Program, spearheading initiatives across the East Asia and Pacific and Western Hemisphere regions. In this role, she deployed over one hundred distinguished American experts internationally to promote US strategic interests and counter foreign interference.

Before her public service career, Dr. Autry was a sociology professor focusing on the role of religion in social and political change in Chinese societies. She taught at leading universities, including Miami University, George Mason University, the Catholic University of America, and Baylor University, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. Beyond academia, Dr. Autry has also managed multimillion-dollar educational and exchange programs, with an emphasis on promoting the rule of law, religious freedom, American studies, and international education at Washington-area nonprofit organizations.

Rowena He

Research Fellow

Rowena X. He (何曉清) is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. A specialist of the 1989 Tiananmen Movement and its subsequent massacre, she is interested in the nexus of history, memory, and power. Her writing, teaching, and public speaking focus on the history of politics and the politics of history and their implications on public opinion, human rights, nationalism, democratization, and war and peace.

Her first book, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, was named in the Top Five China Books of 2014 by the Asia Society’s ChinaFile. The book has been positively reviewed in The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Spectator, The New Statesman, The Christian Science Monitor, Human Rights Quarterly, American Diplomacy, and other international periodicals. Her research has been supported by Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the National Humanities Center, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. He’s op-eds have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nation. She has testified before US Congressional hearings and delivered lectures for the US State Department and Global Affairs Canada. Her scholarly opinions are regularly sought and she has been interviewed by the ABC (Australia), Associated Press, The Asahi Shimbun (Japan), BBC, CBC, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, CTV, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Inside Higher Ed, Le Monde (France), NPR, National Geographic, The New York Times, Reuters, Time Magazine, The Times (London), Times Higher Education, The Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. She was designated among the Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals 2016.

Dr. He’s teaching has been featured by the Harvard Magazine, The Wellesley News, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years. She joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019 and received its Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, the Chinese Communist government in Hong Kong denied the renewal of her work visa, and her position as an associate professor of history was terminated “with immediate effect.”

Born and raised in China, she received her PhD from the University of Toronto.

Gabrielius Landsbergis

Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Gabrielius Landsbergis is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Landsbergis served as minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, a pivotal period for the region. He led Lithuania’s diplomatic service guided by the principle of values-based foreign policy. During his tenure, Lithuania emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine, Taiwan, and freedom fighters worldwide.

Before that, he served in the parliament of Lithuania from 2016, was chairman of the Homeland Union (Lithuanian Conservatives), and was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.

Nader Nadery

Visiting Fellow

Nader Nadery was a senior fellow at the Asser Institute of International and European law. In 2020, he was appointed as a member of Afghanistan’s peace negotiation team for the peace talks in Doha. He also served as chairman of the independent Civil Service Commission of Afghanistan. Prior to joining the commission, he was senior advisor to the Afghan president on strategic affairs and human rights.  

Nadery has also served as director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit; commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission; and director of Afghanistan programs for Global Rights: Partners for Justice. He is the founder of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, which observes elections, and cofounder of the Afghan Civil Society Forum, a foundation for civil society and culture. In 2002 he served as the spokesperson for the Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) that elected the head of Afghanistan’s transitional government. In 2001 he represented Afghan youth activists at the UN peace talks for Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany. Nadery was member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States and also served as chief of mission for No Peace without Justice in Libya in 2012.

Nadery has written extensively on politics, human rights, women’s rights, and democracy. He appears regularly in such media outlets as BBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He was recognized as an “Asian Hero” by Time magazine in 2005 and named as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008. He was awarded a 2004 Reebok Human Rights Award.

Nadery studied law and political science at Kabul University in Afghanistan and earned his MA in international relations from George Washington University. He has also studied leadership at the Kennedy School of Government and has taught constitutional law at the American University of Afghanistan. He speaks English, Persian, Pashtu, Baluchi, and basic Dutch. 

Elbegdorj Tsakhia

Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Elbegdorj Tsakhia is the former president of Mongolia, known for his pivotal role in the country’s democratic transition and his enduring commitment to human rights and global diplomacy. Since leaving office in 2017, Elbegdorj has remained active in global affairs and is internationally recognized for his leadership as an outspoken advocate for freedom and democracy, particularly in Asia.

Born in Zereg, Khovd Province, Elbegdorj grew up in a nomadic herding family and later trained as a journalist at the Lviv Military-Political Institute in Ukraine. His political career began in the early 1990s when he emerged as a leader of Mongolia’s peaceful democratic revolution and one of the drafters of the country’s democratic constitution. He helped dismantle the Communist regime and establish Mongolia as a democratic, plural, open country.

Elbegdorj served two terms as prime minister of Mongolia (1998 and 2004–6) before being elected president in 2009 and re-elected in 2013. As president, he championed democratic reforms, transparency, and human rights, including abolishment of the death penalty, making Mongolia a global leader in human rights advocacy. Under his leadership, Mongolia strengthened its diplomatic ties with major powers while maintaining a balanced foreign policy rooted in the “third neighbor” strategy, preserving Mongolia’s sovereignty between China and Russia.

As an advocate for freedom and democracy, he has engaged with global institutions such as the United Nations, the Munich Security Conference, and the Club de Madrid, where he continues to contribute to global governance and conflict resolution. He is also a member of The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela to promote peace and human rights worldwide.

Focusing on democratic resilience, sustainable development, and justice, he regularly participates in high-level dialogues on democratic transition and global security and has spoken at leading universities and think tanks, including Stanford, West Point, and Harvard.

Elbegdorj’s legacy is defined by his steadfast belief in the power of freedom, justice, and open societies. His life’s work reflects a deep commitment to global democratic integrity and the broader fight for human dignity and sustainable development.