Scott D. Sagan named Caroline S.G. Munro Professor

CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan has been named The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professor in Political Science. A member of Stanford's faculty since 1987, Sagan's research focuses on nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat; nuclear proliferation, particularly in South Asia; ethics and international relations; and accidents in complex organizations. Before coming to Stanford, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993) and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) and the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009). His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use" in Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton's (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009).

Sagan received Stanford's Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching in 1996, and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists, he established Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in government from Oberlin College and holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship in Political Science

The Caroline S.G. Munro Chair was established by the Board of Trustees in 1981 in recognition of Mrs. Munro's farsighted commitment to strengthening scholarship and teaching at Stanford.

A series of gifts during her lifetime and a bequest endowing the William Bennett Munro Memorial Fund in 1973 in honor of her late husband--a professor of history and government at Harvard and the California Institute of Technology--were sufficient to support the William Bennett Munro Professorship in Political Science; the William Bennett Munro Memorial Lectures; and the Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship.

Caroline Sanford Gorton and William Bennett Munro were married in 1913. They had one child, William Bennett Munro, Jr., who graduated from Stanford in 1937. Their granddaughter, Jane Bruce Munro, was a member of the Class of 1968.

In accordance with Mrs. Munro's preferences, the professorship may be awarded in either political science or history.