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Jacob Olidort, Ph.D.

Senior Policy Advisor, Center for Homeland Security & Immigration

"Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy."

- Teddy Roosevelt

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Jacob Olidort is from New York City and serves as Senior Policy Advisor in the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Jacob is a historian of the Middle East with over ten years working on national security issues in the U.S. government and in different research institutions. Most recently he served as an advisor in the Office of former Vice President Mike Pence and a foreign policy advisor for the late Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and for Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). He also served in the Central Intelligence Agency and as an advisor on Middle East Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 

Outside of government, Jacob served as Director of AFPI’s Center for American Security and of its Middle East Peace Project. He has also served as Director of Research at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy and as Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Jacob taught at American University and at George Washington University, and was a Fulbright Scholar to the United Arab Emirates, a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a term member in the Council on Foreign Relations, and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. Jacob holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brandeis University, an A.M. from Harvard University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

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America First National Security Symposium
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Bibi’s Return and the Future of U.S. - Israel Relations

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