Stephen Flynn

Dr. Stephen Flynn is the Founding Director of the Defense Industrial Base Institute at Northeastern University. He is also Professor of Political Science with a faculty affiliation in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and is Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute. Dr. Flynn is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on national security and resilience. From 2022-24, he served as Chair of the Congressionally-mandated National Academies committee to assess the adequacy of strategies related to the nuclear terrorism threat. Additionally, he holds an appointment as a Guest Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and he has served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush administration and on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. Before joining the faculty at Northeastern University in 2011, Dr. Flynn served as President of the Center for National Policy. Prior to that he spent a decade as a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Dr. Flynn served in the Coast Guard on active duty for 20 years, including two tours as commanding officer at sea. He received the M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1990 and 1991 and in 2009, he received an honorary doctorate of laws from Monmouth University.