Thomas J. Biersteker

Biersteker received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science in February 1977, from where he had received an M.S. in February 1975. His A.B. degree was from the University of Chicago, Public Affairs Program in June 1972. His PhD dissertation won the 1978 Helen Dwight Reid Award from the American Political Science Association for best dissertation in International Relations.[5]

Prior to the Graduate Institute, he served as Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University from 1994 to 2006. He was the Olive C. Watson Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies, and earlier the Henry R. Luce Professor of Transnational Organizations in the Department of Political Science at Brown University, from 1992-2006.[6] He was a professor at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California from 1985–1992, where he was founder and Director of the Center for International Studies. He was an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where he taught from 1976-1985.

Biersteker's research interests focus on governance, the history of international relations, international political economy, targeted sanctions, international organizations, diplomacy, peacekeeping, state-building and terrorism.

He has written or co-authored a dozen scholarly books, including the following:

• Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy with Robert McNamara (8th United States Secretary of Defense), James G. Blight, Robert K. Brigham, and Col. Herbert Y. Schandler (New York: PublicAffairs Press, 1999)[7]
• Countering the Financing of Global Terrorism with Sue Eckert (New York and London: Routledge Publishers, ISBN 978-0-415-39643-1, 2007),
• The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, with Rodney B. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
• State Sovereignty As Social Construct, with Cynthia Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
• Distortion or Development? Contending Perspectives on the Multinational Corporation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1978).

He has written many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and policy papers. Among the more influential are:

• "The “Peculiar Problems” of Scholarly Engagement in the Policy Process," International Studies Review (2008),
• "A Comparative Assessment of Saudi Arabia with other Countries of the Islamic World," published in An Update on the Campaign Against the Financing of Terrorism, New York: Council on Foreign Relations (2004),
• "Reducing the role of the state in the economy: a conceptual exploration of IMF and World Bank prescriptions" in International Studies Quarterly (1990), *"Critical Reflections on Post-Positivism in International Relations," International Studies Quarterly (1989),
• "The Dialectics of World Order: Notes for a future archaeologist of international savoir faire," co-authored with Hayward R. Alker, Jr., International Studies Quarterly (1984).