Jack Snyder (Ph.D., Columbia, 1981) is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (MIT Press, 2005); From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton Books, 2000); Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. (Cornell University Press, 1991); The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Cornell, 1984); and Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, co-editor with Barbara Walter (Columbia, 1999). His articles on such topics as democratization and war ("Prone to Violence: The Paradox of the Democratic Peace," The National Interest, winter 2005/2006), imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties, international relations theory after September 11, and anarchy and culture 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 is a member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review and International Security. He edits the W. W. Norton book series on World Politics. He 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.

Recent Publications