David Scott Palmer

David Scott Palmer has published six books, most recently Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace: Lessons from Peru and Ecuador, 1995-1998. (Co-author, David Mares. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012.) In 2006, he published U.S. Relations with Latin America During the Clinton Years: Opportunities Lost or Opportunities Squandered? He is co-author, with Thomas Marks, of the annotated bibliography of “Latin American Guerrilla Insurgencies” for Oxford Bibliographies Online (2011).

Palmer is the author of more than 40 articles and book chapters on such topics as the Latin American military, democracy and its challenges, “informal politics” in highland Peru, guerrilla movements in Latin America and Nepal, the Peru-Ecuador border dispute and its resolution, and the consequences of asymmetry in U.S. relations with Peru. He has published several recent articles on Shining Path and the 2011 Peruvian elections in readers and online publications.

At Boston University, Palmer has served as Chairman of the Political Science Department, Associate Chairman of the Department of International Relations, and as Director of Latin American Studies and Co-Director of Peru Summer, both programs that he helped to found. Before joining the Boston University faculty, he spent twelve years with the State Department as Chair of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Associate Dean for Programs of the School of Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. He has also taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Bowdoin, Princeton, Georgetown, George Washington, The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins, Salamanca (Spain), Catholic University (Peru), and The University of Chile. He held the Federico Gil Chair in Political Science during his 2011 sabbatical at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru and was awarded a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Fellowship to the University of Huamanga (Ayacucho, Peru).

Palmer consults regularly for the U.S. State Department, the National Intelligence Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.