Graham Allison

Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is also the Founding Dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and served until 2017 as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, consistently ranked the world’s top university-affiliated think tank. Under his leadership from 1977 to 1989, the Kennedy School evolved from a small, undefined program into a major professional school of public policy and government, expanding more than twenty-fold.

In public service, Allison served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans during the first Clinton Administration and as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. He has been a member of the Secretary of Defense’s Advisory Board under every Secretary from Caspar Weinberger to James Mattis. For his work in reducing the former Soviet nuclear arsenal, facilitating the safe return of over 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons and eliminating more than 4,000 strategic warheads, he received the Department of Defense’s highest civilian honor, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, twice.

Allison has advised the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Director of the CIA, and served on numerous corporate and public sector boards, including Getty Oil, Natixis, Loomis Sayles, Taubman Centers, Joule Unlimited, Belco Oil and Gas, and advisory boards for Chase Bank, Chemical Bank, Hydro-Québec, and the International Energy Corporation.

He is the author of several influential books, including Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, a national and international bestseller, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World, and Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.

Allison holds degrees from Davidson College; Harvard College (A.B., magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).