Rebecca Bill Chavez is a non-resident senior fellow with the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program. She is also the Principal Advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses and a non-resident Senior Strategic Fellow for Latin America at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2013 through 2017. Prior to joining OSD Policy, she was Professor of Political Science with tenure at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Dr. Chavez received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University and her B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her research has focused on Western hemisphere security and on comparative politics, with an emphasis on security and defense, the rule of law, and democratization.