James Goldgeier is a Professor of International Relations and served as Dean of the School of International Service at American University from 2011-17. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, both at Stanford University. He served as the chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee from 2021-2025 and as a member of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board from 2022-2025. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2019-25. He was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2017-19, and in 2018-19, he held the inaugural Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center. Previously, he was a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He also taught at Cornell University, and has held a number of public policy appointments, including Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2001-2005, he directed George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. His most recent books are Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War (co-edited with Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson) and Foreign Policy Careers for PhDs: A Practical Guide to a World of Possibilities (co-authored with Tamara Cofman Wittes). He is the recipient of the Edgar S. Furniss book award in national and international security and co-recipient of the Georgetown University Lepgold Book Prize in international relations.

Professor Goldgeier serves as a senior adviser to the Bridging the Gap initiative, which encourages and trains scholars and doctoral students to produce research oriented policy-relevant scholarship and theoretically grounded policy work, and he is co-editor of the Bridging the Gap Book Series at Oxford University Press.

Professor Goldgeier is past president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (2015-2017).

Professor Goldgeier’s areas of expertise include contemporary international relations, American foreign policy, U.S.-Russia relations, the European Union, transatlantic security and NATO.