About the Topic: Conventional accounts of the proliferation of illicit transnational actors--ranging from migrant smugglers to drug traffickers to black market arms dealers--describe them as increasingly agile, sophisticated, and technologically savvy. Governments, in sharp contrast, are often depicted as increasingly besieged, outsmarted, poorly equipped, and clumsy in dealing with them. While there is much truth in these common claims, Andreas argues that they are overly alarmist and misleading and suffer from historical amnesia. Drawing especially from the U.S. historical and contemporary experience, he offers a corrective that challenges common myths and misconceptions about the illicit side of globalization.
About the Speaker: Peter Andreas is a professor of political science and international studies in the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Andreas has published nine books, including Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo (Cornell University Press, 2008) and Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 2nd edition 2009). Other writings include articles for publications such as International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and The Nation. His latest book is on the politics of smuggling in American history, titled, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (Oxford University Press, 2013).
CISAC Conference Room
Peter Andreas
Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Brown University
Speaker
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm: Registration/Reception (Manning Faculty Lounge, second floor breezeway fo Stanford Law School)
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm: Panel (Room 290)
An evening panel to discuss behavioral advertising and privacy law, including:
+ Evolving legal, technology and business practices + What companies and individuals need to know + How the international landscape differs from the U.S. + Long term trends and developments + Corporate best practices
U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees T. Alexander Aleinikoff estimates that in the last two years, the UNHCR has taken in an additional 2,000 refugees every day, making it one of the most challenging periods for the U.N. body in decades. Meanwhile, the traditional methods to shelter, protect and aid those refugees don’t always keep pace with growing demands and emerging technologies.
"Many of us work in ways we have worked for many years, where things that have worked in the past continue to work in the present. But, meanwhile, the world has moved on," Aleinikoff recently told a gathering of nongovernment organizations from around the world. The UNHCR, he said, is looking at mobile phone technology, solar power and lighting, fuel-efficient stoves, microcredit loans and stimulating refugee livelihoods.
The agency needed an incubator to test out some of these innovative ideas. So Aleinikoff turned to CISAC, calling on its security experts to collaborate with the UNHCR on a handful of prototypes that would better protect and support the more than 42 million refugees, internally displaced and stateless people worldwide.
The request has led to a multidisciplinary partnership between the UNHCR and CISAC, with students from across the Stanford campus, professors and NGOs, as well as physicians, architects and other professionals eager to volunteer their time and expertise.
“This really matters; it’s about real people,” said Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, CISAC’s co-director and a Stanford Law School professor teaching a class to coincide with the project. “I like to think we are creating a network of people who will stay engaged. I’m looking for people who say: This is exciting, this is doable, this is important, and I want to be a part of this.”
Cuellar has found dozens. Students, professors at the Hassno-Platner Institute of Design – better known as the d.school – as well as Bay Area NGOs and Silicon Valley designers have signed on, attending workshops and brainstorming sessions with UNHCR officials and Stanford students from around the world.
Some of the Stanford professors include Paul H. Wise, a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford Medical School and a CISAC affiliated faculty member; Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a specialist in international political economy; and Bernard Roth, a professor of mechanical engineering and one of the founders of the d.school.
“I’m curious to see how it’s all going to play out,” Paul Spiegel, deputy director of the Division of Program Support at the UNHCR and a senior fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, recently told the Stanford Law School class during a Skype chat from Geneva. “For us at the UNHCR, the most interesting thing is the multidisciplinary nature of this project. This is something we’ve never done before. So this is very innovative and different.”
Two dozens students with majors ranging from engineering to computer science, international policy studies, law and public health are taking Cuéllar’s class, Rethinking Refugee Communities, co-taught by Leslie Witt of the global design consultancy, IDEO.
“I got involved in the project out of intellectual curiosity and because of the prospect of seeing our ideas applied in the field,” said Danny Buerkli, a second year master’s student in international policy studies. “While most of us are not experts in humanitarian policy, we have the luxury of time to reflect and rethink how UNHCR deals with refugee situations. The project is a great way of exploring design thinking, humanitarian policies and working with a large institutional client all at the same time.”
Some of the students are preparing for a visit to a UNHCR refugee camp in Jordan for Syrians fleeing the violence in their homeland. They want to see operations firsthand to better visualize what’s needed on the ground.
You can follow the project at CISAC’s Storify.com page.
The advent of ubiquitous networking and computation and deepening globalization since the 1990s has eroded traditional international security architectures by multiplying conflict surfaces and empowering new actors. This talk describes research in the context of track 1.5 dialogues with Russia and China that aims to develop shared frameworks for understanding escalatory models of cyber conflict, sources of instability, and feasible approaches for risk mitigation. It will argue that cyber has made deterrence much more complex, and now, increased information assurance and new legal or normative constraints on state behavior are likely necessary for effective cross-sectoral deterrence. Finally, it suggests three tasks for cyber norms or confidence and security building measures to attenuate instability.
John Mallery is a research scientist at the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is concerned with cyber policy and has been developing advanced architectural concepts for cyber security and transformational computing for the past decade. Since 2006, he organized a series of national workshops on technical and policy aspects of cyber.
CISAC Conference Room
John C. Mallery
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Speaker
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.
In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.
Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.
Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.
In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.
Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar is a professor and Deane F. Johnson faculty scholar at Stanford Law School, the co-director of CISAC, professor (by courtesy) of political science, a faculty affiliate of CDDRL, and a senior fellow at FSI. A member of the Stanford faculty since 2001, he has served in the Obama and Clinton Administrations, testified before lawmakers, and has an extensive record of involvement in public service. His research and teaching focus on administrative law, executive power, and how organizations implement critical regulatory, public safety, migration, and international security responsibilities in a changing world. In July 2010, the President appointed him to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency charged with recommending improvements in the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs. He also serves on the Department of Education’s National Commission on Educational Equity and Excellence, and the Department of State’s Advisory Sub-Committee on Economic Sanctions.
From early 2009 through the summer of 2010, he was on leave from Stanford serving as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. In this capacity, he led the Domestic Policy Council’s work on criminal justice and drug policy, public health and food safety, regulatory reform, borders and immigration, civil rights, and rural and agricultural policy. Among other issues, Cuéllar worked on stricter food safety standards, the FDA’s regulatory science initiative, expanding support for local law enforcement and community-based crime prevention, enhancing regulatory transparency, and strengthening border coordination and immigrant integration. He negotiated provisions of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and the Food Safety Modernization Act, and represented the Domestic Policy Council in the development of the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.
Before working at the White House, he co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group. During the second term of the Clinton Administration, he worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he focused on countering financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures.
He has collaborated with or served on the board of several civil society organizations, including the Haas Center for Public Service, the Constitution Project, and the American Constitution Society. He has co-chaired the Regulatory Policy Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and served on the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.
After graduating from Calexico High School in California’s Imperial Valley, he received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford. He clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Shiri Krebs is a Professor of Law at Deakin University and Director of the Centre for Law as Protection. She is also the Chair of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, an affiliate scholar at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and co-lead of the Australian Government Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC) Law and Policy Theme. In 2024, she was appointed as a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Her research on drone warfare and predictive technologies in counterterrorism and armed conflict is currently funded by a 3-year Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellowship and an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship at the University of Hamburg.
Prof Krebs’ research projects on international fact-finding, biases in counterterrorism decision-making, and human-machine interaction in drone warfare, have influenced decision-making processes through invitations to brief high-level decision-makers, including at the United Nations (CTED, Office of the Secretary-General), the United States Department of Defense, and the Australian Defence Force.
Her recent research awards include the David Caron Prize (American Society of International Law, 2021), the ‘Researcher of the Year’ Award (Australian Women in Law Awards, 2022), the Australian Legal Research Awards (finalist, Article/Chapter (ECR), 2022), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Researcher Award for Career Excellence (Deakin, 2022).
Before joining Deakin University, Prof Krebs has taught in several law schools, including at Stanford University, University of Santa Clara, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she won the Dean’s award recognizing exceptional junior faculty members.
She earned her Doctorate and Master Degrees from Stanford Law School, as well as LL.B. and M.A., both magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She first joined CISAC as a visiting associate professor and Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow in September 2012, and was a Stanford MacArthur Visiting Scholar between 2013-15. Between 2008 and 2010 she was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Braut-Hegghammer received her PhD, entitled “Nuclear Entrepreneurs: Drivers of Nuclear Proliferation” from the London School of Economics in 2010. She received the British International Studies Association’s Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize that same year for her work.
Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.
In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.
Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-2715
(650) 723-0089
0
ssagan@stanford.edu
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg
PhD
Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he previously served as the social science co-director. He is the Inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellow for Nuclear Ethics and Security at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2026-2027). Sagan also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
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: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).
Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).
In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.
Former co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Dr. Bruce Jones is Director and Senior Fellow of the NYU Center on International Cooperation, and Senior Fellow and Director of the Managing Global Order Program at the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Jones’ research focuses on US policy on global order and transnational threats; on the emerging powers’ strategic policy; on multilateral institutions in peace and security issues; on the role of the United Nations in crisis management and international security; and on fragile states.
Dr. Jones has served as Senior External Advisor for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 on Conflict, Security and Development; as a member of the Secretary-General’s Senior Advisory Group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities (2010-2011); as the Lead Scholar on the International Task Force on Global Public Goods (2007); and as deputy research director for the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004-2005).
Prior to assuming the Directorship of the Center, Dr. Jones served in several capacities at the United Nations. He was Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary-General during the UN reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was Acting Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. From 2000-2002 he was Special Assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process; and held assignments in the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo, and in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Dr. Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics; and was Hamburg Fellow in Conflict Prevention at Stanford University. He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats(Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman of Cooperating for Peace and Security(Cambridge University Press, 2009); author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures; Series Editor of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations(Lynne Reinner) and author of several book chapters and journal articles on US strategy, global order, the Middle East, peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, and strategic coordination.
He is Consulting Professor at Stanford University, Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, and Professor by Courtesy at the NYU Department of Politics.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Bruce Jones
Director and Senior Fellow
Speaker
Center on International Cooperation, New York University
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 725-2705
(650) 724-2996
0
sstedman@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg
PhD
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen Stedman
Senior Fellow
Commentator
Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law
Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He also serves as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, 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 at the Sandia National Laboratory 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 the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000), the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Steven E. Miller of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). His most recent publications include "Shared Responsibility for Nuclear Disarmament" in the fall 2009 issue of Daedalus and "The Case for No-First Use" in the June 2009 issue of Survival. In addition, he co-edited with Jane Vaynman a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review (March 2011) on the international impact of the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, also co-authoring the introduction and conclusion articles.
Sagan has also won four teaching awards: the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009, the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award, Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-2715
(650) 723-0089
0
ssagan@stanford.edu
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg
PhD
Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he previously served as the social science co-director. He is the Inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellow for Nuclear Ethics and Security at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2026-2027). Sagan also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
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: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).
Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).
In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.
Former co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Department of Political Science
Encina Hall West, Rm. 310
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
(650) 725-4031
0
tomz@stanford.edu
William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science
Chair of the Department of Political Science
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Senior Fellow, Stanford King Center on Global Development
Landreth Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
CISAC Affiliated Faculty
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PhD
Michael Tomz is the William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and the Landreth Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
Tomz has published in the fields of international relations, American politics, comparative politics, and statistical methods. He is the author of Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries and numerous articles in political science and economics journals.
Tomz received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award, given to a scholar who, within 10 years of earning a Ph.D., has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. He has also won the Giovanni Sartori Award for the best book developing or applying qualitative methods; the Jack L. Walker Award for the best article on Political Organizations and Parties; the best paper award from the APSA section on Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior; the best paper award from the APSA section on Experimental Research; and the Okidata Best Research Software Award. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation.
Tomz has received numerous teaching awards, including the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Cox Medal for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research. In 2017 he received Stanford’s highest teaching honor, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Tomz holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University; a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Hoover Institution, the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, and the International Monetary Fund.
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Michael Tomz
Associate Professor of Political Science
Commentator
Stanford University
