Thomas Nichols

lecturer, Harvard University Extension School

Thomas M. Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs and a former chairman of the Strategy Department at the United States Naval War College in Newport, R.I., where he also holds the Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy. He previously taught international relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth and Georgetown. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, an M.A. from Columbia University, the Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia, and a B.A. from Boston University. He was personal staff for defense and security affairs in the United States Senate to the late Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania and served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is currently a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York and a fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University. His most recent book, about the revolutionary changes taking place in how nations go to war, is Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventive War (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). His current project is on the reform of nuclear strategy and the reduction of international nuclear inventories.