Our Team

Dr. Benjamin R. Young is an Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at Fayetteville State University. He was a 2024-25 Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Fellow at the RAND Corporation. He is the author of the book, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World (Stanford University Press, 2021). He has taught a wide range of international and national security courses at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dakota State University, and the U.S Naval War College. He has published more than a dozen peer-reviewed scholarly articles on Cold War international history, East Asian politics, and North Korean studies in academic journals. He was a 2018-2019 CSIS/USC NextGen US- Korea Scholar and has also written journalistic pieces for The Washington Post, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Nikkei Asia, The National Interest, The Hill, and NKNews.org. Dr. Young has lived in South Korea during a Fulbright fellowship and has traveled extensively in North Korea, Cuba, China, and Russia. He holds a PhD in history from George Washington University, a MA in history from SUNY Brockport, and B.S in history from SUNY Brockport