David Malet is Associate Professor of Public Affairs at American University. Previously he served as Director of the Security Policy Studies Program at the George Washington University. He also taught at the University of Melbourne, and at Colorado State University. From 2000-2003 he served as Research Assistant for national security issues to US Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
Professor Malet has been researching foreign fighters since 2005 and is the author of Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-author of Working with Returnees from Northeast Syria and Iraq: Rehabilitation and Reintegration Lessons from GCERF (2025). His current research examines how extremist movements crowdsource terror attacks.