ROBERT E. OSGOOD, the third dean of SAIS, was a highly respected expert in foreign policy and the author of several significant texts on international relations. He played a key role at SAIS for 25 years until his death in 1986. He was the school’s director of American Foreign Policy and co-director of Security Studies, but perhaps his most valuable contribution to SAIS was his role in developing what has been called the “SAIS approach,” the analysis of policy based on strong theoretical and historical concepts. He also launched the Master of International Public Policy for mid-career professionals. Outside of his involvement with SAIS, Dr. Osgood was named director of the Washington Center for Foreign Policy Research in 1967, served in 1969-70 on the U.S. National Security Council, and was a member of the secretary of state’s Policy Planning Council from 1983 to 1985.
Robert E. Osgood Professorship in American Foreign Policy
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Established in 1987 by Gretchen A. Osgood in memory of her husband
Held by Eliot A. Cohen
ELIOT A. COHEN is the Robert E. Osgood Professor and ninth dean of SAIS. A graduate of Harvard College, Dr. Cohen received his PhD in political science at Harvard in 1982. After teaching at Harvard and at the Naval War College (Department of Strategy) he served on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, coming to SAIS in 1990. A recent book is Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (Free Press, 2002): other books include (with John Gooch) Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War. In 2011 he published Conquered into Liberty.
In 1991-93 Dr. Cohen directed the U.S. Air Force’s official multi-volume study of the 1991 Gulf War, the Gulf War Air Power Survey. He has an extensive background in executive education, to include programs for general officers in the American armed forces and senior executives in the private sector. He has served as an intelligence officer in the United States Army Reserve, and is a member of the Defense Policy Advisory Board of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.