CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A former Clinton administration Pentagon official was named Wednesday to head the human rights policy wing of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Sarah Sewall served as the Department of Defense’s deputy assistant secretary for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance from 1993 to 1996. Before joining the Department of Defense, she was a senior adviser to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine.

She joined the Kennedy School faculty in 2000 and is currently a lecturer in public policy and program director at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where she will assume the directorship immediately and serve through the 2006-07 academic year.

At the Pentagon, Sewall worked on peacekeeping initiatives.

Sewall is a Rhodes Scholar who has written on U.S. foreign policy and national security. She is currently working on a book about the civilian in war.