page_title: Ash Carter
section_title: Other roles
hierarchical_section_title: Ash Carter / Other roles
caption_attribution_description: English: Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, left, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry listen to former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, right, as he makes a point during a conversation at the North American Forum conference in Ottawa, Canada, on Oct. 13, 2012. Carter earlier addressed the audience of the conference.
context_page_description: Ashton Baldwin Carter is an American public policy professor who served as the 25th secretary of defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He is currently Director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
  Carter began his career as a physicist. After a brief experience as an analyst for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, he switched careers to public policy. He joined the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1984 and became chair of the International & Global Affairs faculty. Carter served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during President Clinton's first term, from 1993 to 1996, responsible for policy regarding the former Soviet states, strategic affairs, and nuclear weapons. During President Obama's first term, he served first as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and then Deputy Secretary of Defense until December 2013. In February 2015, he replaced Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense and served until the end of the Obama administration.
context_section_description: From 1990 to 1993, Carter was chairman of the Editorial Board of International Security. Previously, he held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and Rockefeller University.
  In 1997, Carter and former CIA Director John M. Deutch co-chaired the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group which urged greater attention to terrorism. In 1998 Carter, Deutch and Philip Zelikow (later executive director of the 9/11 Commission) published an article on "catastrophic terrorism" in Foreign Affairs. From 1998 to 2000, he was deputy to William J. Perry in the North Korea Policy Review and traveled with him to Pyongyang.  In 2001–02, he served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, and advised on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
  Carter was also co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, which designs and promotes security policies aimed at preventing the emergence of major new threats to the US.
  Carter had been a longtime member of the Defense Science Board and the Defense Policy Board, the principal advisory bodies to the Secretary of Defense.  During the Bush administration, he was also a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's International Security Advisory Board; co-chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Policy Advisory Group; a consultant to the Defense Science Board; a member of the National Missile Defense White Team, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control.  He has testified frequently before the armed services, foreign relations, and homeland security committees of both houses of Congress.
  In addition to his public service, Carter was a senior partner at Global Technology Partners, focused on advising investment firms in technology and defense.  He has been a consultant to Goldman Sachs and Mitretek Systems on international affairs and technology matters, and speaks frequently to business and policy audiences.
  He was also a member of the boards of directors of the Mitre Corporation and Mitretek Systems and the advisory boards of MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Draper Laboratory.  Carter was also a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Physical Society, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Carter was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was named as a Fellow in the American Physical Society (Forum on Physics & Society) in 2015.
  Carter also serves as an Honorary Director on the Board of Directors at the Atlantic Council.
caption: Carter, William Perry and former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, October 12, 2012
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