Francis J. Gavin

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Board of Editors for the Texas National Security Review. 

Prior to his tenure at Johns Hopkins SAIS, he was a Professor of Political Science at MIT, where he was selected as the inaugural Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies in 2013. Before joining MIT, he taught at the University of Texas from 2000 to 2013. While there, he was named the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in 2005 and served as the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. 

He is a Senior Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Texas Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and an affiliate of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He is the Co-Founder, Co-Director, and Principal Investigator, with James Steinberg, of the Carnegie International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON), and Founder and Director of the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative (NSRI). Gavin currently serves on the CIA Historical Panel and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

He has been a National Security Fellow at the Olin Institute, Harvard University, an International Security Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, a Donald Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas, a Smith Richardson Junior Faculty Fellow, a Senior Research Fellow at the Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway, a Public Policy School at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Ernest May Senior Visiting Professor in Applied History, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 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, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy (Brookings Institution Press), which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. His IISS-Adelphi book, The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era was published in 2024. Gavin’s most recent books, Thinking Historically – A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy and Wonder and Worry: Contemporary History in an Age of Uncertainty were published in 2025. 

Gavin earned his BA at the University of Chicago in Political Science, an MSt. from Oxford in Modern European History, and a PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania.