Carter Named U.S. Weapons Buyer

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ashton B. Carter was named the U.S. military’s chief weapons buyer by President Barack Obama on Monday.

Carter—who is co-director of the Preventive Defense Project—has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon for purchasing what he deems to be unnecessary weapons and has called for greater alignment between military strategy and spending.

Carter was originally scheduled to teach the class “American National Security Policy” at the Kennedy School this spring, but he joins the growing list of Harvard professors who have traded their office in Cambridge for one in DC.

This hasn’t been the first time that Carter has worked for a presidential administration.

More than a decade ago, Carter served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy for three years during the Clinton administration.

As Assistant Secretary of Defense, he dealt with the possession of weapons of mass destruction in the United States and abroad.

In particular, Carter worked toward the removal of nuclear weapons from parts of the former Soviet Union and managed military planning during the U.S.’s response to North Korea’s growing nuclear program in 1994.

Carter also oversaw the Department of Defense’s Counterproliferation Initiative and managed the reform of DOD’s national security export controls.

His colleagues at the Kennedy School said they were optimistic about his upcoming tenure in DC.

“The Belfer Center [for Science and International Affairs] and Harvard Kennedy School will have a difficult time filling the void Ash will leave, but he is setting such a wonderful example of what this school and center are about: putting policy into practice,” said Graham T. Allison ’62—a colleague of Carter’s at the Belfer Center—in a statement released yesterday.

Former Dean of the Kennedy School Joseph S. Nye, who has been offered the position of U.S. ambassador to Japan, echoed Allison’s statement, calling the nomination a “terrific choice” when rumors of Carter’s potential nomination first circulated.

Though Carter is a leading expert on arms control, he has not spent his career in either government procurement or with the weapons industry besides his stint as Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Instead Carter, who graduated from Yale with a degree in physics and medieval history and earned his doctorate at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, has worked at Harvard since 1984.

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.