Presented in conjunction with the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies.

Seating is limited. Advance registration recommended via the following link: Register Here. For questions, contact Arastoo Taslim at at2986@columbia.edu.

This event is free and open to the public.

Austin Long is an Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and a Member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Columbia University. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Long was previously an Associate Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He was an analyst and adviser to the U.S. military in Iraq (2007-2008) and Afghanistan (2011 and 2013). In 2014-2015, Long was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Nuclear Security, serving in the Joint Staff J5 (Strategic Plans and Policy) Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Policy Division. His research has appeared in International Security, Security Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, and Survival. Long received his B.S. from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Greg Whisler is a specialist on the Russian military, having followed the issue for 17 years. He has studied the conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine and tracked Russian defense reforms under President Putin. Whisler received his M.S. in Defense and Strategic Studies from Southwest Missouri State and a B.A. from the University of Northern Iowa.

Kimberly Marten is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and a faculty member of both the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. She directs the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations at Columbia’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and PONARS (the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia), and serves as an associate editor of the Journal on Global Secuity Studies. Marten’s current research focuses on Russian foreign and security policy, and on non-state armed actors. She has written four books, the most recent of which is Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell, 2012). Her first book, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, 1993), received the Marshall Shulman Prize. Her scholarly articles have appeared in International Security, Armed Forces and Society, International Peacekeeping, the Journal of Intervention and State-Building, Problems of Post-Communism, and Post-Soviet Affairs, as well as a number of edited volumes, and she has completed two open-source contract projects for the Pentagon’s Director of Net Assessment. She has published policy articles in The Washington Quarterly, and opinion pieces in ForeignAffairs.com, the Huffington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Monkey Cage Blog for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today. Marten has made guest appearances on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, “The Charlie Rose Show” with guest host Richard Haass, the PBS Newshour, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, and on CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera, among others, and has been a frequent guest on WNYC radio’s The Takeaway. Marten earned her A.B. at Harvard University (1985) and Ph.D. at Stanford University (1991). She was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control, has taught at the Ohio State University and the Japanese National Defense Academy, and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Olin Institute and at Tokyo’s Institute for International Security Studies (the Nakasone Institute) through a Hitachi/Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan. Her research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Social Science Research Council/MacArthur Foundation, and the Government of Canada, among others.

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, the Certificate of Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978, and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1981.

Rajan Menon holds the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York. Previously he was the Monroe J. Rathbone Professor and Chairman in the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University. Menon has been a Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, an Academic Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Director for Eurasia Policy Studies at the Seattle-based National Bureau for Asian Research (NBR). He has taught at Columbia University and Vanderbilt University and served as Special Assistant for Arms Control and National Security to Congressman Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY), while an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, of which he is a member. His current work concerns American foreign and national security policy, international security, globalization, and the international relations of Asia and Russia and the other post-Soviet states. Menon was awarded the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching (at Vanderbilt University) and the Eleanor and Joseph F. Libsch Award for Distinguished Research and the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (at Lehigh University). He was selected as a Carnegie Scholar (2002-2003) and has also received fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the US Institute of Peace. Menon has written more than 50 opinion pieces and essays for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Washingtonpost.com. Menon has appeared as a commentator on National Public Radio, ABC, CNN, BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and World Focus (PBS). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.