Professor

Scott D. Sagan

Stanford University
Political scientist; Academic research institution administrator; Educator
Area
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Specialty
Political Science
Elected
2008

Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow and Co-Director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also serves as Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. From 1984 to 1985, he 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 The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2023) with Vipin Narang and co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn. In 2022 Sagan received the Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award for “exceptional service to the nongovernmental nuclear policy community.” 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 war and the causes of nuclear proliferation.

Last Updated