The American Military at 250: The 2025 George Washington Symposium

Symposium Presenters

Richard Bell

Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. His new book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, is published by Penguin in November 2025.

Douglas Bradburn

On January 1, 2018, Douglas Bradburn became the 11th Director of George Washington's Mount Vernon. Bradburn joined Mount Vernon in 2013 when named the Founding Director of The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. He is an award-winning author and well-known scholar of early American history. Bradburn is the author of The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804, and three anthologies, including Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion, the most significant book produced to mark the 400^th anniversary of the English founding of Jamestown. Before coming to Mount Vernon, Bradburn served as Chair of the History Department at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago and his B.A. in history and economics from the University of Virginia. 

Stephen Brumwell

Stephen Brumwell is a British-born independent historian and author living in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has written several acclaimed books, including Turncoat: Benedict Arnold and the Crisis of American Liberty, and George Washington: Gentleman Warrior, which won the 2013 Washington Book Prize. A regular speaker about his research, and a veteran reviewer of history titles for The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Brumwell has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Deb Freeman

Culinary anthropologist Deb Freeman is the executive producer and host of the Emmy-winning PBS documentary Finding Edna Lewis, and is the host and creator of Setting the Table, a critically acclaimed and multi-award winning podcast. Freeman has appeared on multiple television shows, and her written work includes contributions to Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, Food52, The Local Palate, Epicurious, Garden and Gun, and has provided cultural commentary for BBC Radio.

Maeve Kane

Dr. Maeve Kane is a historian of race, gender, and clothing in early America at the University at Albany.  Her work uses digital humanities, material culture, and Indigenous studies methods to study gender and community formation in early America.  Her first book, Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade and Exchange is available through Cornell University Press, and she is currently at work on two projects about community formation in early American churches and the modern commemoration of the American Revolution.

John Kelly

General Kelly was born and raised in Boston. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1970 and was discharged as a sergeant in 1972. He was later commissioned as an infantry officer of Marines and saw service overseas and across the globe including wartime service in the Middle East. Other duties along the way included time spent in legislative affairs, serving as a special assistant to the Supreme Allied Command – Europe, and serving as the Senior Military Assistant to two Secretaries of Defense. His most recent—and final—assignment was as the Combatant Commander, United States Southern Command. He retired after nearly 45 years of active service on 1 February 2016. Responding to the opportunity to serve the nation yet again General Kelly, after confirmation by the U.S. Senate, assumed the role as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and after that nearly two years as White House Chief-of-Staff.

Mark Edward Lender

Mark Edward Lender is Professor Emeritus at Kean University, and is author or co-author of over a dozen books, including (with James Kirby Martin) the acclaimed A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789, and (with Garry Stone) the award-winning Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle—also a finalist for the George Washington Literary Prize. His most recent book, also with Martin, is War without Mercy: Liberty or Death in the American Revolution (2025).

Kathleen Miller

The Honorable Kathleen Miller is a distinguished leader in national security, and is the former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller, who oversaw $2.46 trillion in Department of Defense budgets. Prior to her appointment to this position, she was a career member of the Senior Executive Service with 16 years experience as an Army executive in the fields of financial management, logistics, and operations. She holds two Presidential Rank Awards and currently serves on advisory boards in both industry and academia.

Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch

Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch is professor and the chair of the history department at the University of Toledo. A historian of gender, race, and citizenship in early America, she is the author of Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (2010), and several articles and book chapters about women and the American Revolution. Her current book project, The World of Westover: Mary Willing Byrd, Gender, Slavery, and Citizenship in Revolutionary Virginia, received a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship and is under contract with the University of Virginia Press.

David L. Preston

David L. Preston is the General Mark W. Clark Distinguished Professor of History at The Citadel, where he teaches cadets and officer candidates about U.S. military history, leadership, and early American history. The author of several books, he is best known for Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, which received the Guggenheim Lehrman Prize for Military History in 2016 among several other awards.

Meg E. Roberts

Meg E. Roberts is the Fennell Fellow for the History of the Americas at the University of Edinburgh. Her PhD research, recently completed at the University of Cambridge, explores the labour of caregivers during the American Revolutionary War, with particular focus on Continental Army nurses. Her work has been generously supported by various fellowships, including a McNeil Center Dissertation Fellowship and a George Washington Presidential Library fellowship at Mount Vernon in 2023-24.

Kori Schake

Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute.  She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg.

Carlos Del Toro

The Honorable Carlos Del Toro was sworn in as the 78th Secretary of the Navy 9 August 2021. As Secretary, he is responsible for over 900,000 Sailors, Marines, reservists, and civilian personnel and an annual budget exceeding $210 Billion. His priorities include securing the training and equipment successful naval operations demand and addressing the most pressing challenges confronting the US Navy and Marine Corps. His 22-year naval career included a series of critical appointments and numerous tours of duty at sea. After retiring at the rank of Commander, Secretary Del Toro founded SBG Technology Solutions, Inc. in 2004. He holds a Masters in National Security Studies from the Naval War College, a Masters in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Masters in Legislative Affairs from George Washington University.

Serena Zabin

Serena Zabin is the Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. Professor of History and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College. Her research focuses on families, gender, and politics in the era of the American Revolution. Professor Zabin is the author, most recently, of the prizewinning The Boston Massacre: A Family History (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), which was also named an Amazon Editor’s Choice for History in 2020.