Professor Anthony H. Cordesman, a national security analyst for ABC News and an expert on terrorism and defense against terrorism, will speak at NIU Thursday and Friday.

Cordesman, the author of more than 20 books, including “Cyberthreats: Information Warfare and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Defending the U.S. Homeland” and “Transnational Threats from the Middle East,” was invited to speak at NIU by political science professor Daniel H. Unger.

The Graduate Colloquium Committee of the Political Science Department will finance Cordesman’s visit.

“In his capacity as the department’s colloquium coordinator, Unger consulted with the students last fall, and Cordesman was their choice,” said political science professor Gregory Schmidt.

Unger, however, is in Vietnam for most of the semester, and Schmidt will fill in for Unger in introducing Cordesman.

The lecture Cordesman will deliver Thursday night is titled “American Security In an Age of Asymmetric Warfare and Terrorism.”

At 11 a.m. Friday, Cordesman will attend the seminar “International Relations In an Era of Asymmetric War” in the Holmes Student Center’s Illinois Room.

Cordesman was formerly an adjunct professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and currently is the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Many of the studies Cordesman wrote on subjects such as “Homeland Defense” and “Military Balance” can be downloaded from the CSIS Web site at www.csci.org.

Although Cordesman is a prodigious author and has held numerous government posts, he is best known for his assessment of the Gulf War for ABC News.

Cordesman has successfully developed parallel careers in academia and the federal government.

Twice he was named Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian, an academic honor, and has held positions in the State Department, Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the NATO International Staff.

Cordesman also served as national security assistant to Sen. John McCain of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

His most prominent former titles include director of policy and planning for resource applications in the Department of Energy, director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and civilian assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.