Anna Simons is a Professor Emerita of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School. She joined the SO/LIC curriculum at NPS (1998-2019) after six years as an assistant and then associate professor of anthropology at UCLA.

She is the author of several books and multiple monographs: Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone (1995); The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces (1997); co-author of The Sovereignty Solution: A Commonsense Approach to Global Security (2011); Got Vision? Unity of Vision in Policy and Strategy (2010); 21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them (2013); 21st Century Challenges of Command: A View from the Field (2017), and is currently completing a monograph about military advising.

She has overseen various research efforts for the Office of Net Assessment and other offices within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as for several different military commands. As a member of the Defense Analysis Department, Simons happily taught courses in the anthropology of conflict, military advising, low intensity conflict in Africa, political anthropology, and comparative SOF. She also developed and ran six iterations of the Long Term Strategy Seminar sponsored by ONA.

Once upon a time she attended Harvard (A.B.), briefly worked as a journalist, then as a presidential speechwriter, spent multiple years as a vagabond abroad, accidentally went back to Harvard for her PhD, and even more accidentally ended up in Somalia for her dissertation fieldwork. She now lives in Montana.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS: FULL LIST SEE HERE

“Finessing primacy – some military considerations before subversion does us in,” Small Wars Journal, August 11, 2021. Parts I and II.

“The company I kept: twenty years at the Naval Postgraduate School” in Kerry Fosher and Lauren Mackenzie (eds.), The Rise and Decline of U.S. Military Culture Programs 2004-20. Marine Corps University Press, 2021.

“Cynicism: a brief look at a troubling topic,” Small Wars Journal, February 16, 2021.

“The weight-training puzzle: six shooters, ‘six packs, or men with a sixth sense – what does SF need?” Small Wars Journal, November 5, 2020.

PERSONAL WEBSITE