Jack Snyder

Jack L. Snyder is the Robert and Renee 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 Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, co-editor with Barbara Walter (Columbia University Press, 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 as strategies for preventing atrocities, international relations theory after September 11, and anarchy and culture have appeared in The American Political Science Review, Daedalus, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, The Journal of Democracy, and World Politics. His commentaries on current public issues such as the promotion of democracy abroad have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, and on National Public Radio.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Snyder 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.

Education

• PhD in Political Science, Columbia University
• BA in Government, Harvard University