Jack Snyder (Ph.D., Columbia, 1981) s 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 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 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 Religion and International Relations Theory, editor (Columbia University Press, 2011).  His articles on such topics as crisis diplomacy (“The Cost of Empty Threats: A Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review, August 2011, co-authored with Erica Borghard), democratization and war, nationalism, imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties, international relations theory after September 11, and anarchy and culture have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, and World Politics.  A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, editor of the W. W. Norton book series on World Politics, and an elected member of Columbia’s Arts and Sciences Policy Planning Committee, Snyder received a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1973 and the Certificate of Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978.

Recent Publications