About LRS

My name is Leslie Rogne Schumacher. I write, speak, and teach about history, foreign policy/IR, intelligence studies, and leadership. I hold a PhD in European and Middle Eastern history from the University of Minnesota and a BA in history and religion from Hamline University. My work is on Mediterranean and MENA relations, migration and refugee studies, Orientalism and its critics, defense challenges in the EU and Middle East, and the conflicts in national security over public diplomacy, confidentiality, and intelligence. Much of my work has centered on the concept of the East-West relationship and its related international and military dynamics.

I serve in a variety of positions. First, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Wells College (link), where I also serve as Director & PI for Wells’s chapter of the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence, an IC careers initiative funded and overseen by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Second, I am a Sessional Lecturer in International Studies at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (link). Third, I am a Regional Scholar in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University (link). Finally, I am a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of America & the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (link), for whom I provide policy analysis. Before coming to Wells, Penn, Cornell, and FPRI, I was the David H. Burton Fellow & Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where I taught Middle Eastern, European, and global history. I live in Ithaca, NY with my wife Dr. Kaja J. Tally-Schumacher, who is a Visiting Scholar and Faculty Associate at Cornell (link). I have also taught at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, Hamline University, Germantown Academy, Tompkins Cortland Community College, and the Sant’Anna Institute in Sorrento, Italy. In Fall 2009 I was a Visiting Research Student at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, and in Spring 2012 I was a Visiting Student Fellow in the History Department at Harvard University. In May 2017, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for my outreach efforts on immigration and refugee affairs. In February 2024, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society for my accomplishments in original and policy research and my substantial record of leadership in academic organizations and communities.

I have a passion for writing and have published in a variety of venues. I recently published a book on the Eastern Question in Britain and Ottoman reaction and reform in the Middle East, titled The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain: Democracy and Diplomacy, Orientalism and Empire (link). I have provided policy expertise on current political, economic, and security challenges in the Mediterranean Sea to such venues as Transatlantic Policy Quarterly (link) and War on the Rocks (link). I have also contributed timely articles on: the role of the Middle East in the rise of European integration theory, in the Journal of European Studies (link); the legacy of Poland’s first post-communist president, Lech Wałęsa, in The New Islander (link); and, first, the foreign policy roots of the Tea Party and, second, historical precedents for the Edward Snowden affair, in History News Network (link 1, link 2). My JES article is frequently cited as a foundational piece on contemporary Middle East studies debates, including as part of the standard curriculum at Stockholm University (link). I have published three book chapters, one on imperialism in the Eastern Mediterranean (link), one on the 1890s Armenian Massacres (link), and a forthcoming one on Italian refugees in British-controlled Malta in the early 19th century.

I provide service for many organizations, journals, and initiatives. I sit on the review panels of Romance, Revolution & Reform, Open Military Studies, Refugee Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Third World Quarterly, the Journal of Early Modern History, the Journal of Tourism History, Victorian Network, Studia Historyczne, Britain and the World, Akropolis: Journal of Hellenic Studies, and the Marmara Journal of European Studies.  For the last two, I also serve on their editorial boards. I have also served in the International Association of Jesuit Universities’ Migration initiative. A former champion high school debater and head coach of a champion debate team, I am the current university member on the board of the Pennsylvania State High School Speech and Debate League.

I have long been involved in politics, campaigning, and outreach for a variety of worthy causes. As a teenager, I was a founding chapter member of Iron Range Youth in Action, as well as a co-founder and organizer for a grant program called Orr Youth Development, for which I lobbied at the state and national level for education and public health concerns. In college, I served as an elected student representative in my college's student congress, including for a time as Chair of the Board of Elected Representatives. While teaching at SUNY-New Paltz in 2013, NPR correspondent Deborah Amos and I worked together on educating students in international journalism (link). In 2016, I coordinated outreach to 50,000 registered voters in the key Democratic constituency of Ithaca, NY as the Tompkins County Co-Chair for the Democratic Congressional campaign for NY-23, supporting candidate John Plumb (link). In 2017, I provided expert commentary to NPR for a story on Saudi women’s issues (link), and I helped organize a visit to SJU’s campus by former NATO secretary-general and Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen (link). In 2018, I served on the Philadelphia Host Committee for the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin Medal Ceremony (link). From 2016 to 2019, I acted as a faculty mentor and speaker for two student-led groups at SJU, one on refugee advocacy and the other on constructive political dialogue.