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Francis J. Gavin

Director

Francis J. Gavin is the  Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center 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 previously was an Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs and an International Security Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He was also a Research Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he worked on the Presidential Recordings Project and directed the Presidency and Economic Policy Project.

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.

Gavin received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Diplomatic History from the University of Pennsylvania, a MSt. in Modern European History from Oxford, and a B.A. in Political Science (with honors) from the University of Chicago.

His publications include numerous scholarly articles, book reviews and editorials. His book, Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971, was published in 2004 by the University of North Carolina Press under their New Cold War History series. Gavin has won several prestigious awards and honors, including the 2002-2003 Smith Richardson Junior Faculty fellowship in International Security and Foreign Policy and the 2003-2004 Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellowship at the University of Texas. His current research project is entitled, “Strategy and Arms Control Reconsidered: Reassessing the History of Missile Defense, Nuclear Proliferation, and U.S. National Security Policy.” He was a founding member of the Historical Society, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Selected Research:

• "Same As It Ever Was:  Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War," International Security, Winter 2009/10
• Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971, University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Selected Commentary:

• "No need to ban the bomb," Los Angeles Times, Mar 2010
• "How to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions," The World, Public Radio International (PRI), Mar 2010

Selected Articles and Book Contributions

• "Nuclear Nixon," in The Foreign Policy of the Nixon Administration, eds., Fred Logevall and Andrew Preston, Oxford University Press, scheduled for publication in 2008
• "Understanding Nuclear Proliferation in an Age of Globalization," Globalization and Transatlantic Security, ed., Rachel Epstein, European Union Institute Press, 2006
• "Blasts from the Past: Nuclear Proliferation and Rogue States Before the Bush Doctrine," International Security, Winter 2005

Selected Research Project:

• "Strategy and Arms Control Reconsidered: Reassessing the History of Missile Defense, Nuclear Proliferation, and U.S. National Security Policy"