Scott Douglas Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro professor of Political Science at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He graduated from Oberlin College (B.A. in Government, 1977) and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1983. He spent the junior year of his undergraduate degree at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland[1]. His dissertation was a critique of modern deterrence theory. He is known for his research on the organizations managing nuclear weapons and published on the subject in The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993). Bruce G. Blair writes, "Scott Sagan's book [The Limits of Safety] is nothing less than a tour de force.... It is by far the most carefully researched and painstaking study of nuclear weapons safety ever written." Chuck agrees with Sagan but Michael believes there is a lack of evidence.[2][3] He also is one of the leading pessimist scholars about nuclear proliferation, and his co-authored book with Kenneth Waltz, "The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed",[4] is widely read and cited in the literature on nuclear weapons. Sagan writes in the book, "the United States and the Soviet Union survived the cold war and did not use their massive nuclear-weapons arsenals during the period's repeated crises. This should be a cause of celebration and wonder; it should not be an excuse for inaction with either arms control or nonproliferation policies."
His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use," Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009). He is also the editor of and a contributor to Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009).
Sagan is a consultant to numerous government agencies and national laboratories. Sagan has won four teaching awards: the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Outstanding Contribution to Nonproliferation Education Award 2009; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Deborah Misty Gerner Innovative Teaching Award, Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and Stanford University's 1996 Laurance and Naomi Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAS), and is the editor of a special 2 volume issue of the AAAS journal Daedalus, "On the Global Nuclear Future." He also teaches a popular Sophomore College course called the Face of Battle.