[2] In July 2020, he became president of the American Academy in Berlin, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent transatlantic institution in the German capital.

His father is an internist; his late mother was a teacher, an administrator at the University of Connecticut and the head of marketing for a Manhattan law firm.

From December 2006 to May 2009, Benjamin served as the Director for the Center on the United States and Europe, and Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution.

[10] Benjamin and Simon would follow up The Age of Sacred Terror in 2005 with The Next Attack: The Globalization of Jihad (Hodder & Soughton (in Britain), 2005), a book which received high-praise from Bill Clinton.

In the April 30, 2006 edition of Time, Benjamin wrote a favorable profile of Pervez Musharraf, with the headline, "Why Pakistan's Leader May Be The West's Best Bet for Peace."