Dr. Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, as well as holding multiple fellowships. He was previously a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. His 30 year career also includes time spent working at the Pentagon. He is an expert in nuclear strategy, ethics and war, public opinion about the use of force, nuclear non-proliferation, and the safety of hazardous technology.
Dr. 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 at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War.
Before joining the Stanford faculty, Dr. Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award in 2017, which recognizes a person whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency” in the international studies community.
He is an expert in nuclear strategy, ethics and war, public opinion about the use of force, nuclear non-proliferation, and the safety of hazardous technology.
Dr. Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security; The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons; and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate. He is the co-editor of Planning the Unthinkable; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia; co-editor of Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima; and co-editor of Insider Threats. His other recent publications include ‘The Korean Missile Crisis’ in Foreign Affairs; and ‘Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants’ in International Security. Dr. Sagan’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
He received his B.A. in Government from Oberlin College, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.