Robert Jervis

Robert Jervis (April 30, 1940 – December 9, 2021) was an American political scientist who was the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

Jervis was co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, a series published by Cornell University Press.

He is known for his contributions to political psychology, international relations theory, nuclear strategy, and intelligence studies.

According to the Open Syllabus Project, Jervis is one of the most-frequently cited authors on college syllabi for political science courses.

Robert Jervis was born in 1940.

In the early 1960s, while studying for his PhD in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, Jervis participated in the Free Speech Movement.

Jervis died of lung cancer on December 9, 2021, at the age of 81.

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Jervis met his wife Kathe (née Weil) Jervis in 1961 on a student trip to the Soviet Union.

Together they had two daughters, Alexa and Lisa.

Lisa Jervis is a co-founder of Bitch magazine.

He earned a BA from Oberlin College in 1962.

At Oberlin, he developed an interest in nuclear strategy, and was influenced by Thomas Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict and Glenn Snyder’s ''Deterrence and Defense.

'' In 1962, he began graduate work at University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Glenn Snyder.

He received a PhD from UC Berkeley in 1968.

From 1968 to 1972, he was an assistant professor of government at Harvard University and was an associate professor from 1972 to 1974.

According to Jervis, Schelling brought him to Harvard. In 1974, Jervis was a candidate for the tenured chair vacated by Henry Kissinger when he started working in the Richard Nixon administration, but the Government department at Harvard did not consider Jervis qualified.

At Harvard, he developed a close friendship with Schelling and Kenneth Waltz. From 1974 to 1980, he was a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He was a member of the Columbia University faculty from 1980 until his death in 2021.

He was a member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies in the School of International and Public Affairs.

Jervis was the recipient of the 1990 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

He was president of the American Political Science Association in 2000–2001.

Jervis consulted for the CIA.

He worked on perceptions and misperceptions in foreign policy decision making.

Jervis played a key role in introducing insights from psychology to International Relations scholarship.

Charles Glaser described Jervis's work on the security dilemma as "among the most important works in international relations of the past few decades."

According to Jack Snyder, "Jervis's body of thought can be categorized in terms of five interrelated themes: communication in strategic bargaining, perception and misperception in international politics, cooperation in anarchy, the nuclear revolution, and complex system effects and unintended consequences."

According to Thomas J. Christensen and Keren Yarhi-Milo, "in seeking to understand both behavior and outcomes in world affairs, Jervis championed the role of individuals’ perceptions and formative experiences rather than just broad political, social, and economic forces... [His] work was always rooted in the complexities of actual decision-making by real people with quirks and flaws."

Jervis was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

In 2006 he was awarded the NAS Award for Behavior Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War from the National Academy of Sciences.

He participated in the 2010 Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, a high-level research program on nuclear proliferation.

In 2021, he was elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.