Dr. Michael Freeman
Vice Provost for Academic Leadership (Acting)
 

Dr. Michael Freeman is the Acting Vice Provost for Academic Leadership and a professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), where he has been a faculty member since 2005.  During his tenure at NPS, he has been the Chair of the Faculty Council (2017), Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs (2018-2021), Vice Provost for Academic Affairs (2021-2022), and Chair of the Defense Analysis Department (2025).  
 
His research interests focus on terrorism, international security, and U.S. foreign policy.  He received his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago in 2001 and is the author of Freedom or Security: The Consequences for Democracies Using Emergency Powers to Fight Terror (Praeger, 2003), the editor of Financing Terrorism: Case Studies(Ashgate 2012), the author of The Global Spread of Salafism (University of Nebraska, 2021), as well as the author of several journal articles and book chapters on terrorism, emergency powers, and terrorist financing.  He is also the designer of eleven online, “serious” games on irregular warfare, cyber conflict, and terrorism/counterterrorism.  
 
He has also been an instructor at the University of Chicago and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth, and an analyst in the US intelligence community.