BIO:
Graham Allison

Founding dean of Harvard's modern John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Graham Allison has for three decades been a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy with a special interest in terrorism. He served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, during which Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the U.S. and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.

As Director of BCSIA, Dr. Allison has assembled a team of more than two dozen leading scholars and practitioners of national security to analyze terrorism in its multiple dimensions. Dr. Allison was the organizer of the Commission on America's National Interests (1996 and 2000) that included leading Senators and national security specialists from across the country (former Senator Sam Nunn, Senators John McCain, Bob Graham, and Pat Roberts, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage, Robert Ellsworth, and others).

The Commission's work highlighted the threat of mega-terrorism as a major challenge to American national interest. Senator Roberts credited the work of the Commission as inspiration in his creating a Subcommittee on Emerging Threats of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Dr. Allison is also a leading analyst of Russia and its transformation to democracy and market economy as well as an authority on the threat of loose nukes and weapons of mass destruction. He has written numerous articles and op-eds in the foremost journals and newspapers and is a sought-after speaker and commentator.

Dr. Allison is the author of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, among the bestselling political science books since its initial publication over three decades ago. His newest book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe was published by Times Books in August 2004.