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Stephen Biddle is Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served on the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board, on General David Petraeus’ Joint Strategic Assessment Team in Baghdad in 2007, as a Senior Advisor to the Central Command Assessment Team in Washington in 2008-9, as a member of General Stanley McChrystal’s Initial Strategic Assessment Team in Kabul in 2009, and on a variety of other government advisory panels and analytical teams. Biddle lectures regularly at the U.S. Army War College and other military schools, and has presented testimony before congressional committees on issues relating to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; force planning; conventional net assessment; and European arms control.

Biddle’s book Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton University Press, 2004) won four prizes, including the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Award Silver Medal for 2005, and the 2005 Huntington Prize from the Harvard University Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. His other publications include scholarly papers in International Security, Security Studies, The Journal of Strategic Studies, The Journal of Politics, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, and other academic journals; shorter pieces on military topics in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The American Interest, The National Interest, and other news and opinion outlets; and 31 NATO and U.S. government sponsored reports and monographs.

Before joining the Columbia faculty in fall 2018 Biddle was Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and has held the Elihu Root chair in military studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and the Roger Hertog Senior Fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations. He co-directs the Columbia University Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS), and has held held teaching and research positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), and Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA). Biddle was awarded the U.S. Army Superior Civilian Service Medal in 2003 and again in 2006, and was presented with the U.S. Army Commander’s Award for Public Service in Baghdad in 2007. His research has won Barchi, Rist, and Impact Prizes from the Military Operations Research Society. He holds AB, MPP, and Ph.D. degrees, all from Harvard University.

Thomas J. Christensen is Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University.  He arrived in 2018 from Princeton University where he was William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War, Director of the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and faculty director of the Masters of Public Policy Program and the Truman Scholars Program.   From 2006-2008 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research and teaching focus on China’s foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security.  His most recent book, The China Challenge:  Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (W.W. Norton) was an editors’ choice at the New York Times Book Review, a “Book of the Week” on CNN”s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and the Arthur Ross Book Award Silver Medalist for 2016 at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Christensen has also taught at Cornell University and MIT. He received his B.A. with honors in History from Haverford College, M.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He has served on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, as co-editor of the International History and Politics series at Princeton University Press, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee for the Schwarzman Scholars Program. He is currently the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Nancy B. Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Book Series on the United States in Asia at Columbia University Press.  Professor Christensen is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Non-Resident Senior Scholar at the Brookings Institution. He was presented with a Distinguished Public Service Award by the United States Department of State.

Stephen Sestanovich is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Affairs and an Affiliate at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.  His research interests include Soviet and East European studies, strategic planning and international studies, and foreign policy.

Sestanovich has served as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Advisor to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States (NIS).  He also served as the principal spokesman for the administration and the Department of State before Congress and the public on policy toward the NIS.  Sestanovich has held positions at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Security Council, and the Department of State, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sestanovich received a B.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.  He also completed a program of graduate study at Columbia University. 

Keren Yarhi-Milo is the Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Her research and teaching focus on international relations and foreign policy, with a particular specialization in international security, including foreign policy decision-making, interstate communication and crisis bargaining, intelligence, and US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Yarhi-Milo’s first book (Princeton University Press, 2014) titled, Knowing The Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence Organizations, and Assessments of Intentions in International Relations, received the 2016 Furnnis Award for best book in the field of international security. Also, it is Co-Winner of the 2016 DPLST Book Prize, Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association. This book explores how and why civilian leaders and intelligence organizations select and interpret an adversary’s signals of intentions differently. Her new book, titled, Who Fights for Reputation? The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict, came out with Princeton University Press (2018) and received the 2019 Best Book Award on Foreign Policy from the American Political Science Association. It also won the Biennial Best Foreign Policy Book Award from the International Studies Association, which will be presented at the 2021 ISA Annual Convention. The ISA committee stated that Yarhi-Milo’s book “considers a long-debated question in international relations — whether reputation matters,” and “impressively showcases how to integrate different theories and methods from multiple disciplines in understanding leaders’ decision making in Foreign Policy Analysis.”

Yarhi-Milo’s articles have been published or are forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, and Security Studies.

Before joining the faculty at Columbia University, she was an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University’s Politics Department and the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs. She was previously a post-doc fellow at the Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a pre-doc fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. Yarhi-Milo has worked at the Mission of Israel to the United Nations, as well as served in the Israeli Defense Forces, Intelligence Branch. Her dissertation received the Kenneth Waltz Award for the best dissertation in the field of International Security and Arms Control in 2010. She also has received awards for the study of Political Science from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Arthur Ross Foundation, and the Abram Morris Foundation.

She holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in Political Science from Columbia University.

Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (co-editor with Alexander Cooley; Cambridge University Press, 2015); Power and Progress: International Politics in Transition (Routledge, 2012); Religion and International Relations Theory (Columbia, 2011); Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (MIT Press, 2005), co-authored with Edward D. Mansfield; From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton 2000); Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Cornell, 1991); and Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, co-editor with Barbara Walter (Columbia, 1999).

His articles on such topics as democratization and war, imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties as strategies for preventing atrocities, and international relations theory after September 11 have appeared in The American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, and World Politics.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Snyder received a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1973, a Certificate from Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978, and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1981.