Professor Freedman is one of the leading U.S. authorities on Israel, the Middle East, and American foreign policy.
He received his B.A. in Diplomatic History from the University of Pennsylvania and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations from Columbia University. He has been an Assistant Professor of Russian History at the United States Military Academy, Associate Professor of Political Science and Russian at Marquette University and Professor of Political Science at the Baltimore Hebrew University, including a tenure as President of the institution. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or co-author of twenty books: five on Soviet foreign policy and fifteen on Israel and the Middle East. He has been a commentator on National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Voice of America as well as other major American news outlets. His has advised policymakers in State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He has also been called upon to serve the United States government on delegations to Moscow, Beijing, Uzbekistan, and Tunis. Professor Freedman is well-known to members of the Council, having addressed it on a number of occasions since 1981.