John D. Woodward, Jr.
Professor of the Practice of International Relations
John D. Woodward, Jr. is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. During his twenty-one-year CIA career, John served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with his assignments including operational and leadership roles in Washington D.C., East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.
From 2000 to 2006, John worked at the RAND Corporation, a federally funded research and development center, as a senior policy analyst (2000-2003) and the Associate Director of RAND’s Intelligence Policy Center (2005-2006), where he helped oversee, manage, and develop RAND’s work for the national security community.
From 2003 to 2005, John served as the Director of the U.S. Department of Defense Biometrics Management Office, where he received the Army’s third-highest civilian award for his work using biometric technologies to identify national security threats. Prior to that, he practiced law, worked as a law clerk for a federal district court judge, and served as a U.S. Army officer commissioned in the Corps of Engineers.
From 2006 to 2015, John taught graduate courses on national security issues as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Through his years of government service, public policy work, and university teaching, John has gained extensive experience related to intelligence, counter-terrorism, and technology policy issues. He has testified before Congress on four occasions, the Commission on Online Child Protection, and the Virginia State Crime Commission.
John most recently edited a history of intelligence entitled Spying: From the Fall of Jericho to the Fall of the Wall, (Waynesburg University Press, 2023). His other publications include Biometrics: Identity Assurance in the Information Age, (McGraw-Hill, 2003), Army Biometric Applications: Identifying and Addressing Sociocultural Concerns (RAND, 2001) and his many articles have appeared in various journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Legal Times, Studies in Intelligence, The Intelligencer, and the University of Pittsburgh Law Review.
Woodward is an active member of the Virginia State Bar and serves as an instructor for the Virginia Mountain Valley Lawyers’ Alliance, which provides free and low-cost legal education. He is a licensed emergency medical technician (EMT).
Professor Woodward‘s primary areas of interest include intelligence, counter-terrorism, national security, homeland security, East Asia, and biometrics. Appointed by the Massachusetts Speaker of the House, he served as a voting member of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition from 2021 to 2022.
In 2024, the Provost named John to serve as the Director of the Division of Military Education. In this role, he oversees the activities of BU’s Air Force, Army, and Navy/Marine Corps ROTC. In 2023, he became the Director of the Pardee School’s International History Institute.
