Dr. Lewis Stern served ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency, including a tour in Bangkok, Thailand, attached to the Indochina Operations Group, and twenty years for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he was responsible for Southeast Asian security and defense policy. From September 2002 to August 2008 Dr. Stern was the Director for Southeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prior to that position, Dr. Stern served as the Director for Indochina, Thailand and Burma in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1988 to 2001.
Since retiring from federal service in 2010, Dr. Stern has served as a Senior Advisor at the CNA Corporation (2010-12) and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University (2010-11) after two years as a Visiting Research Fellow there.
Dr. Lewis has also taught courses covering Asia as an Adjunct Professor at James Madison University (2012), and Mary Baldwin College (2010-11). He has also served as Visiting Research Fellow (2001-02) at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, during which time he wrote his fourth book on contemporary Vietnam, Defense Relations Between The United States And Vietnam: The Process Of Normalization, 1977-2003 (North Carolina, McFarland, 2005).
Dr. Stern remains a prolific writer on Southeast Asian issues. His articles include: “The New Vietnamese Vocabulary for Foreign and Defense Relations,” Asia Pacific Bulletin, East West Center, March 2014, “Vietnam and the South China Sea,” (with Michael McDevitt), CNA Corporation, March 2013, “The Vietnamese Military and the Revised Statutes of the Communist Party,” Asian Profile, October 2012, and “Cambodia Today,” StratFor Global Intelligence: Other Voices, November 2012. Dr. Stern earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1974, and an M.A. and PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburg in 1974 and 1985, respectively.