Robert David English (born 1958) is an American academic, author, historian, and international relations scholar who specializes in the history and politics of contemporary Eastern Europe, the USSR, and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. He is an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of ''International Foreign Policy and Defense Analysis'' at the

University of Southern California School of International Relations The University of Southern California School of International Relations (SIR) is the third-oldest school of international relations in the world. A subdivision within the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the sch ...

Early life

Born in 1958, he received a B.A. in history from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1980. He later received an M.P.A. from the

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1982 and a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University in 1995.Robert D. English's Biography on the University of Southern California Website
/ref> As part of his doctorate, English completed a Ph.D. dissertation titled "

views the West: the intellectual and political origins of

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

new thinking."

Career

He worked in the

US Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

from 1982 to 1986 and the Committee for National Security between 1986 and 1988. He taught as an assistant professor at the

Bologna Center The Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe in Bologna, Italy, is the European campus of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a division of Johns Hopkins University located in Washington, D.C. SAIS Europe offers an int ...

in the

Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most ...

School of Advanced International Relations before he became assistant professor in the School of International Relations at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. In addition, he has received fellowships from places like the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

; the Princeton Society of Fellows; the U.S. Fund for Peace; the

International Research & Exchanges Board The International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) is an international, nonprofit organization that specializes in global education and development. IREX works with partners in more than 100 countries. History IREX was established in 1968 by ...

; and the Ford Foundation, where he has a "'Dual Expertise Fellowship' in Soviet/ East European and national security affairs."

Author

He wrote parts of ''Rebirth: A Political History of Europe Since World War II'' with Cyril E. Black,

Jonathan E. Helmreich Jonathan may refer to: *Jonathan (name), a masculine given name Media * ''Jonathan'' (1970 film), a German film directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer * ''Jonathan'' (2016 film), a German film directed by Piotr J. Lewandowski * ''Jonathan'' (2018 ...

, and A. James McAdams in 1999. In 2000, he co-edited ''My Six Years With Gorbachev: Notes from a Diary'' with Jack F. Matlock, Jr. and Elizabeth Tucker, which is the account of Anatoly S. Chernyaev's time as an aide to

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

. His most notable work is ''Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

'', an intellectual history of the rise to power of Gorbachev and his 'New Thinking' in the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. The book first charts the origins and nature of "Old Thinking," which persisted in the traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the USSR, and he goes on to chart the changes in society and of intellectual class in the

history of the USSR The history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR) reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. Though the terms "Soviet Russia" and "Soviet Union" often are synonymous in everyday speech (either acknowledging the dominance ...

under

Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Premier of the Soviet Union, chairm ...

, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. He is working on a "book-length study," to be called ''Our

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

n Brethren: History, Myth, and the Politics of

n National Identity''. He is writing the entry for ''The

Kosovo War The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war ...

'' in the next edition of the ''Oxford Encyclopedia of World Politics''. He is also contributing a chapter, ''The Path(s) not Taken: Contingency and Counterfactual in Analysis of the Cold War's End'', in a book to be edited by William C. Wohlforth, ''Witnesses to the End of the Cold War: Oral History, Analysis, Debates''.

Recognition

In 1996, English won the Harold D. Lasswell Prize from the

American Political Science Association The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, ...

for the work that he later used in writing ''Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War''. In 2001, he received the

Marshall Shulman Prize The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) is a scholarly society dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about the former Soviet Union (including Eurasia) and Eastern and Central Europe. The ASEEES supports teachi ...

from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

Early life

Career

Author

Recognition

References

Further reading