Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative and as chair of the Steering Committee for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on Ethics, Technology, and War. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000), the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Steven E. Miller of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). His recent publications include, with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino, “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” in the American Political Science Review (February 2013), and “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012). In addition, he co-edited with Jane Vaynman a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review (March 2011) on the international impact of the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, also co-authoring the introduction and conclusion articles.

Sagan was the recipient of the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He has also won four teaching awards: the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; and Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.