Elizabeth N. Saunders

Elizabeth N. Saunders is a professor of political science at Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests focus on the domestic politics of international security and U.S. foreign policy, including the presidency and foreign policy, and the politics of war.

Prior to joining Columbia, she was a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Her first book, “Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions,” was published in 2011 by Cornell University Press and won the 2012 Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award from APSA’s International History and Politics section. Her new book, “The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace,” was published by Princeton University Press in March 2024.

Saunders has previously been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a postdoctoral fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University; a Brookings Institution research fellow in the Foreign Policy program; and a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow.

She holds an bachelor’s in physics and astronomy and astrophysics from Harvard College; a Master of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Cambridge; and a doctorate in political science from Yale University.