Joseph Ledford is a Hoover Fellow and the Assistant Director of the Hoover History Lab at the Hoover Institution, where he also serves as the Vice Chair of the Applied History Working Group. A historian of US foreign relations, his research focuses on the individuals and institutions responsible for the exercise of American power in the world and the domestic politics of foreign policy, broadly construed. His other interests include the uses of history in policy-making.
Ledford is currently finalizing the manuscript of his first book, which provides a new comprehensive history of the Iran-Contra affair, from the scandal’s origins in the politics of the 1970s through its resolution in the mid-1990s. He is also conducting research for another book project that will examine the misuses and abuses of history in the making of American foreign policy.
Ledford received his PhD in history from the University of California–Berkeley. Prior to joining the Hoover Institution, he was an America in the World Consortium (AWC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an AWC Predoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.
