Scott Douglas Sagan (born 1955) 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 is known for his research on nuclear weapons policy and nuclear disarmament, including discussions of system accidents, and has published widely on these subjects. In 2017 Sagan received the International Studies Association's Susan Strange Award. Sagan was the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015 and the International Studies Association's Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He currently serves as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Chair of the Committee on International Security Studies and on the Academy's Council. Biography Sagan holds a B.A. in Government from Oberlin College (1977) and a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1983). He spent the junior year of his undergraduate degree at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1987, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as 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 Laboratories and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Work Sagan 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." 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, 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 non-proliferation policies." His most recent publications include The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age, co-edited with Vipin Narang (Cornell University Press, 2022); Insider Threats, co-edited