Joseph A. Ledford is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of US foreign relations. His research focuses on the individuals and institutions responsible for the exercise of American power in the world, particularly the role of the president, and the domestic politics of foreign policy, broadly construed. His other interests include the uses of history in policy making.

Ledford’s current book project provides a new comprehensive history of the Iran-Contra affair, a major foreign policy scandal that nearly destroyed Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It examines Iran-Contra from the scandal’s origins in the tumultuous politics of the 1970s through its resolution in the 1990s.

Ledford received his PhD in history from the University of California–Berkeley. Prior to joining the Hoover Institution, he was an America in the World Consortium (AWC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as well as an AWC Predoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.