Francis J. Gavin

Francis J. Gavin is an academic on American foreign policy. A historian by training, his teaching and research interests focus on U.S. foreign policy, national security affairs, nuclear strategy and arms control, presidential policymaking, and the history of international monetary relations. He is the founding Director of Studies for The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the first Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also the director of The Next Generation Project – U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions, a multi-year national initiative sponsored by The American Assembly at Columbia University. He was a founding member of the Historical Society, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Academic Scholar

Francis J. Gavin is first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions.

Gavin’s writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2012). He received a Ph.D. and M.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Studies in Modern European History from Oxford University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Gavin has been a National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, an International Security Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a Research Fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a Smith Richardson Junior Faculty Fellow in international Security and Foreign Policy, a Donald D. Harrington Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas, a Senior Research Fellow at the Nobel Institute, and an Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar.

He is an Associate of the Managing the Atom Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, Senior Fellow of the Clements Program in History, Strategy, and Statecraft, a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center, an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, DC, a Senior Advisor to the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and a life-member of the Council on Foreign Relations.