Elizabeth N. Saunders is a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.  Her research and teaching interests focus on international security and U.S. foreign policy, including the presidency and foreign policy, and the politics of using force.  Prior to joining Columbia, she was a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.  Her first book, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions, was published in 2011 by Cornell University Press and won the 2012 Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award from APSA’s International History  and Politics section.  Her latest book, The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace, was published by Princeton University Press in 2024.  She has previously been a Stanton Nuclear
Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars; a postdoctoral fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies
at Harvard University; a Brookings Institution Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies; and a
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.  Saunders holds an A.B. in physics and
astronomy and astrophysics from Harvard College; an M.Phil. in international relations from the
University of Cambridge; and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.