CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E217
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

[email protected]
(650) 725-2715 (voice)
(650) 724-5683 (fax)

Research Interests
development of norms concerning the use of force; the management of hazardous technology; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and South Asia

Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He also serves as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000), the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Steven E. Miller of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). His recent publications include, with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino, “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, and “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012). In addition, he co-edited with Jane Vaynman a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review (March 2011) on the international impact of the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, also co-authoring the introduction and conclusion articles.  

Sagan has also won five teaching awards: the International Studies Association's Distinguished Scholar in International Security Studies in 2013; the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; and Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.