Former Obama Official Tapped to Lead Military's Medical School After Its Last President Was...

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"A face familiar to military medicine was picked to lead the Defense Department's medical school and research university in Bethesda, Maryland, after the school's previous president was pushed out last year.

Dr. Jonathan Woodson, an Army Reserve major general who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs under President Barack Obama, has been named the next president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He will take over leadership of the school on June 21.

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Woodson has served on the Board of Regents at the military medical university since 2016 and was chairman last year during the tumultuous departure of the school's previous president, Dr. Richard Thomas.

The Defense Department chose not to renew Thomas' five-year contract when it expired in mid-2021, even though he received an overwhelming endorsement from the board, including a staunch defense by Woodson.

Thomas' supporters said the failure to renew the contract was politically motivated, since he promoted the school's expansion while a DoD initiative launched under President Donald Trump, a Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation review, recommended downsizing the university or completely eliminating it.

Woodson, who led the DoD's health affairs from 2010 to 2016, currently serves as a management professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business and is a professor of surgery and professor of health law, policy and management in the university's School of Medicine and School of Public Health, respectively."