The 4th Annual Robert Jervis Conference
“Liberalism and the Future of International Order”
A Conference Honoring the Work of Jack Snyder
Friday, March 27, 2026
1501 International Affairs
420 West 118th Street, 15th Floor
Registration for this conference has closed.
The event will be livestreamed at this link: https://youtube.com/live/RclYyRtWXOc?feature=share
Sponsored by The Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies; the Department of Political Science; The Harriman Institute of Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies; The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy; and the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Liberalism is at a crossroads. At home and abroad, liberal values, practices, and institutions are under assault. The Fourth Annual Robert Jervis Conference will focus on the diverse sources, processes, and mechanisms underpinning the decline of liberal politics, both domestically and internationally, and explore the prospects for the renewal of liberal politics and international cooperation. Professor Jack Snyder, the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science, has long been both an admirer of liberalism’s virtues and a critic of liberal ideology untempered by pragmatic considerations. The Conference celebrates the contributions of Professor Snyder as a scholar, a mentor, and a longtime leader in the Columbia community.
Schedule of Events:
8:30 am – 9:00 am: Light Breakfast, Lobby
9:00 am – 9:15 am: Welcome
Page Fortna, Columbia University
Ronald Krebs, University of Minnesota
Alexander Cooley, Barnard College, Columbia University
9:15 am – 10:45 am: Liberalism, Hypocrisy, and International Order
Chair: Ronald Krebs, University of Minnesota
Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College
Alexander Cooley, Barnard College, Columbia University
Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College
10:45 am – 11:00 am: Break
11:00 am – 12:15 pm: Human Rights in a World of Nationalism and Populism
Chair: Dawn Brancati, Brown University
Fiona B. Adamson, SOAS University of London
Kate Cronin-Furman, University College London
Shareen Hertel, University of Connecticut
12:15 pm – 1:30 pm: Buffet Lunch in 15th Floor Lobby and Room 1512
1:30 pm – 2:45 pm: Great Power Politics and Imperial Ambitions
Chair: Victoria Tin-bor Hui, University of Notre Dame
Thomas Christensen, Columbia University
Colleen Larkin, University of California IGCC
Paul MacDonald, Wellesley College
2:45 pm – 3:00 pm: Break
3:00 pm – 4:45 pm: The Future of Liberalism and International Order
Chair: James Davis, University of St. Gallen
Rachel Bronson, former President and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Colin Kahl, Stanford University, and former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Sarah Mendelson, Carnegie Mellon University, and former U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
Jack Snyder, Columbia University
Leslie Vinjamuri, President and CEO, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
4:45 pm – 5:00 pm: Closing
Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Public Reception in 15th Floor Lobby
Speaker Biographies
Fiona B. Adamson, SOAS University of London
Fiona B. Adamson is Professor of International Relations with research interests in the international politics of migration, mobility and diaspora, with a particular focus on conflict and security. She is currently Associate Editor of Security Studies, and co-president (with Erin A. Chung) of the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association. She serves as an adjunct faculty member of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs at Chatham House. In addition, Fiona is a researcher in the EU H2020-funded project MAGYC (Migration Governance and Asylum Crises) and co-convenes (with Eiko Thielemann) the London Migration Research Group (LMRG).
Fiona received her PhD from Columbia University in New York, and her BA from Stanford University in California. She joined SOAS in 2007 and served as Head of Department 2010-2013, and Research Director 2018-2021. Previously, was Director of the Programme in International Public Policy at University College London (UCL).
She has held visiting and honorary appointments at Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Basel, University of Toronto and Humboldt University, Berlin. Her research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Guggenheim Foundation, Ford Foundation, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Leverhulme Trust, and British Academy.
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Dawn Brancati, Brown University
Dawn Brancati is an Associate Teaching Professor of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Her research focuses on peacebuilding, primarily on democratic tools to prevent and resolve violent conflicts within states. In her research, Brancati has examined the conditions under which decentralization and elections are likely to result in or mitigate violence, as well as the factors that lead people to challenge authoritarian regimes, demand independence, seek democratic reforms, and support democracy abroad, among other issues.
Brancati is the author of two monographs, “Peace by Design” and Democracy Protests: Origins, Features, and Significance,” as well as a textbook on research methods entitled “Social Scientific Research.” She has also authored numerous articles in leading academic journals, including the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics and others.
Brancati has received numerous prestigious grants and fellowships supporting her research from institutions including the German Marshall Fund and National Science Foundation, as well as Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities. She has also consulted and advised various governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies on her research, such as the U.S. Department of State, CIA, USAID and World Bank. Brancati earned her Ph.D., M.Phil. and MA in political science from Columbia University and a BA in government from Cornell University.
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Rachel Bronson, former President and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Rachel Bronson is a senior advisor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. From February 2015 to January 2025, she served as the Bulletin’s president and CEO where she oversaw the organization’s programming, publishing, communications, fundraising, finances, and stewardship of the iconic Doomsday Clock. Under her leadership, the Bulletin dramatically increased the organization’s visibility and impact: audience increased by 500%, staff and budget doubled, and activities around nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies grew significantly.
She also serves as the Lester Crown Nonresident Senior Fellow for Energy and Geopolitics at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Before joining the Bulletin, Bronson served as the vice president of studies at the Chicago Council (January 2007-January 2015), putting the Council on the list of one of the top think tanks to watch, and a publisher of influential policy reports. She also taught Global Energy as an adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management.
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Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College
Mlada Bukovansky’s research focuses on the evolving norms and institutions of the international system. She has written on revolutions and changing conceptions of sovereignty, corruption and anti-corruption regimes, the World Trade Organization and agricultural trade, and U.S. responsibilities in a changing world order. Her current work focuses on international ethics and on the challenges to the liberal international order. She has a longstanding interest in the intersection between the study of history, especially the history of political thought, and that of international relations.
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Thomas Christensen, Columbia 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 is Lost in the Cold War: The Story of Jack Downey, America’s Longest-Held POW (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022). His earlier 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.
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Alexander Cooley, Barnard College
Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. From 2015 to 2021, he served as the 15th Director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for the Study of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe.
Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors—including emerging powers, international organizations, multinational companies, NGOs, and Western enablers of grand corruption—have influenced the development, governance and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cooley is the author and/or editor of eight academic books including, Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2017), co-authored with John Heathershaw, and more recently, Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-authored with Daniel Nexon.
In addition to his academic research, Professor Cooley serves on several international advisory boards engaged with the region and has testified for the United States Congress and Helsinki Commission. Cooley’s opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs, and his research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Open Society Foundations, Carnegie Corporation, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, among others. Cooley earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
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Kate Cronin-Furman, University College London
Kate Cronin-Furman is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at University College London, where she directs the MA in Human Rights. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in October 2015 and has held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. In addition, she holds a J.D. and has practiced law in New York, Cambodia, and The Hague.
She is also one of the conveners of the Advancing Research on Conflict (ARC) Consortium, which provides methodological and ethics training and support to researchers working in violence-affected contexts. Her research has been published in World Politics, European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Global Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Political Science & Politics, and the International Journal of Transitional Justice. She also writes for the mainstream media, with commentary pieces appearing in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage blog.
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James Davis, University of St. Gallen
James Davis is a Professor for Political Science with a special focus on international politics at the University of St. Gallen, where he has been teaching since 2005. He is also the Director of the Institute for Political Science (IPW-HSG) and the Chair of the Centre for Security Economics and Technology (CSET-IPW-HSG), which was established in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (VBS). Prior to his current position, he served as the Dean of the School of Economics and Political Science from 2015 to 2019 and as the Vice-Dean of the same school from 2012 to 2015. Professor Davis’ research interests include international security, methods of political science, political psychology, and transatlantic relations. He holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Political Science from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Michigan State University.
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Page Fortna, Chair and Harold Brown Professor of US Foreign and Security Policy, Department of Political Science, Columbia University; Former Director, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Page Fortna (PhD Harvard, 1998) is the Harold Brown Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. Her research focuses on the international politics of climate change, terrorism, the durability of peace in the aftermath of both civil and interstate wars, and war termination. She is currently working on projects on regional security and climate change, climate change and power in the international system, and terrorism in civil wars. Her research combines quantitative and qualitative methods, draws on diverse theoretical approaches, and focuses on policy-relevant questions.
Fortna also serves on the Executive Committee of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has won the Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association, the Columbia Provost’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Mentoring, and the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award. She has held fellowships at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth, the Olin Institute at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Hoover Institution. She received her BA from Wesleyan University. Professor Fortna teaches courses on the international politics of climate change, war termination and the durability of peace, terrorism, cooperation and security, and research methods.
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Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College
Stacie Goddard is the Betty Freyhof Johnson ‘44 Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost for Wellesley in the World. Her research and teaching focuses on questions of great power competition and international order. Her latest book, When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order was published by Cornell University Press in 2018. Here she examines how a rising power’s legitimation strategy affects whether a great power confronts or accommodates a potential challenger. If a rising power can portray its ambitions as legitimate, it can make the case that, far from being a revolutionary power, its advances will only preserve, and perhaps even protect, the prevailing status quo, then great power accommodation is likely. In contrast, if a rising power’s claims are illegitimate—if they are inconsistent with prevailing rules and norms—then great powers will see its actions as threatening, making containment and confrontation likely. At Wellesley, she teaches a number of courses rooted in this research, including a seminar on great power competition, a course on “dangerous ideas” and international order, and a course on nuclear politics. She also enjoys writing for public outlets, and her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
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Shareen Hertel, University of Connecticut
Shareen Hertel is the Wiktor Osiatyński Chair of Human Rights & Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. Her research focuses on changes in transnational human rights advocacy, with a focus on labor and economic rights issues. Hertel has served as a consultant to foundations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations agencies in the United States, Latin America and South Asia. She has conducted fieldwork in factory zones along the U.S.-Mexico border, in Bangladesh’s garment manufacturing export sector, among NGO networks in India, and in the multilateral trade arena. Hertel is editor of The Journal of Human Rights, serves on the editorial boards of Human Rights Review as well as Human Rights and Human Welfare, and is co-editor of the International Studies Intensives book series of Routledge.
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Victoria Tin-bor Hui, University of Notre Dame
Victoria Tin-bor Hui is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in comparative politics and international relations, with a focus on state-society relations, contentious politics, and global struggles for freedom. Her work bridges historical inquiry, contemporary political analysis, and sustained engagement with democracy defenders confronting repression.
Professor Hui was a first-generation college student who began her academic journey studying Journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She later participated in an exchange program at Georgetown University before earning her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Between college and graduate school, she worked in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, including as press officer for Martin Lee, widely known as the city’s “Father of Democracy.” These formative experiences continue to shape her commitment to combining rigorous scholarship with public engagement and policy relevance.
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Colin Kahl, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Colin Kahl is the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), an interdisciplinary research hub in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of CISAC’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and a professor of political science (by courtesy).
From April 2021-July 2023, Dr. Kahl served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy and represented the Department as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. He oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which focused the Pentagon’s efforts on the “pacing challenge” posed by the PRC, and he led the Department’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and numerous other international crises. He also led several other major defense diplomacy initiatives, including: an unprecedented strengthening of the NATO alliance; the negotiation of the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; historic defense force posture enhancements in Australia, Japan, and the Philippines; and deepening defense and strategic ties with India. In June 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III awarded Dr. Kahl the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award presented by the Secretary of Defense.
During the Obama Administration, Dr. Kahl served as Deputy Assistant to President Obama and National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden from October 2014 to January 2017. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from February 2009 to December 2011, for which he received the Outstanding Public Service Medal in July 2011.
Dr. Kahl is the co-author (along with Thomas Wright) of Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021) and the author States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Dr. Kahl previously taught at Georgetown University and the University of Minnesota, and he has held fellowship positions at Harvard University, the Council on Foreign Relations, CNAS, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and International Engagement. He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).
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Ronald Krebs, University of Minnesota
Ronald R. Krebs is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and a Professional Lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. An expert on foreign policy and international relations, he is the author most recently of Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which received the 2016 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award in International History and Politics and the 2016 Giovanni Sartori Book Award, for the best book developing or applying qualitative methods, from the American Political Science Association.
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Colleen Larkin, University of California IGCC
Colleen Larkin is a Research Fellow with the Managing the Atom Project and the International Security Program. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University specializing in International Relations. Her research interests include nuclear strategy, arms control, foreign policy, and strategic narratives. In her dissertation, she studies the politics of strategic change and the emergence of strategic narratives, focusing on the evolution of narratives about nuclear weapons and deterrence in U.S. foreign policy. Her work has been published in the European Journal of International Security. She previously served as a Hans J. Morgenthau fellow in Grand Strategy at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to Columbia, she graduated from Wellesley College with degrees in Political Science and Mathematics.
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Paul MacDonald, Wellesley College
Paul MacDonald is an American political scientist and a professor of political science at Wellesley College. He is known for his research on global power politics, U.S. foreign policy, and the political and military dimensions of overseas expansion.
His work has been widely published in the American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Security, Security Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Review of International Studies, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. He is also a faculty member of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, and an affiliate at the Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
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Sarah Mendelson, Carnegie Mellon University, and former U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson has served as a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University since 2018. Beginning in September 2024, she is also Director, Sustainable Futures. From January 2018-August 2024, she was Head of CMU’s Heinz College in Washington, DC.
At CMU, she co-chairs the University’s Sustainability Initiative and is a faculty affiliate of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. She is also a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Center for Sustainable Development in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, a co-chair of SDSN USA, and a board member of the Free Russia Foundation.
From 2015-2017, Ambassador Mendelson served as the U.S. Representative to the UN’s ECOSOC and as an alternate delegate from the United States to the UN’s General Assembly. She led on international development, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and combating human trafficking. There she oversaw campaigns to get country-specific resolutions passed in the General Assembly and to get NGOs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, accredited to the UN.
The author of over 100 scholarly and public policy publications, Ambassador Mendelson received her BA in history from Yale University and her PhD in political science from Columbia University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Jack Snyder, Columbia University
Jack Snyder (PhD, Columbia, 1981) is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. His books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, with Edward D. Mansfield; From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict; Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition; The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914. He is editor of several books including Human Rights Futures (Cambridge University Press, August 2017), with Stephen Hopgood and Leslie Vinjamuri; Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, with Alexander Cooley, and Religion and International Relations Theory. His articles include “The Modernization Trap,” Journal of Democracy, April 2017, on populist nationalism, and “The Cost of Empty Threats; A Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review, August 2011, with Erica Borghard. Professor Snyder is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and editor of the W. W. Norton book series on World Politics. Professor Snyder received a B.A. in Government from Harvard in 1973 and the Certificate of Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978.
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Leslie Vinjamuri, President and CEO, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Leslie Vinjamuri is the president and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She joined the Council in 2025 from the Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, in London, where she served as director of the U.S. and the Americas program and previously as dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, associate fellow, and trustee. Dr. Vinjamuri is Professor of Practice in International Relations and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London, where she was previously professor of international relations (tenured). She is a Marshall Commissioner and vice chair of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.
Dr. Vinjamuri is passionate about international affairs, education, and leadership. She has led research teams of high-level experts on critical issues of U.S. global engagement, geopolitics, and international order, convened partnerships across multiple geographies, and taught graduate and undergraduate courses on international affairs and diplomacy. She thrives on public speaking, engaging global communities, and building new research initiatives.
She was previously founding co-director and then director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice, and later co-chair of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London. Dr. Vinjamuri worked in the Asia Bureau at USAID and at the Congressional Research Service. She served on the faculty of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and had held fellowships at Harvard University and the London School of Economics. Dr. Vinjamuri also sits on the advisory boards of Princeton University’s Reimagining World Order, LSE US Centre, and LSE IDEAS. Dr. Vinjamuri received a BA from Wesleyan University (Phi Beta Kappa), an MSc (Distinction) from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Columbia University.
