Michael Levi, Expert on Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Joins Council to Examine Role of Science and Technology in U.S. Foreign Policy

January 31, 2006—Arms control and nonproliferation expert Michael A. Levi has joined the Council as a fellow for science and technology. “We are very excited to have Michael join the Studies Program,” said Vice President and Director of Studies James M. Lindsay. “Michael’s appointment expands our work on science and technology, particularly the threat posed by nuclear weapons.” Levi has worked extensively on nuclear and radiological weapons issues, as well as science and technology in foreign policy. At the Council, he will complete a book on nuclear terrorism and direct a roundtable series on the role of science and technology in an increasingly interdependent world. Levi will be based in New York.

Before joining the Council, Levi was a nonresident science fellow (2004-2005) and a science and technology fellow (2003-2004) at the Brookings Institution. Prior to that, he was director (2002-2003) and deputy director (2001-2002) of the Federation of American Scientists’ flagship Strategic Security Project. 

He is the coauthor of Untapped Potential: U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation with the Islamic World (Brookings, 2005) and The Future of Arms Control (Brookings, 2004). His essays have been published in the New Republic, Foreign Policy, Nature, and Scientific American, among others. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Financial Times, and he writes a monthly column on science and security for the New Republic online. Levi was also a technical consultant to Fox’s critically acclaimed television drama “24.”

Levi holds a BSc (honours) in mathematical physics from Queen’s University, Kingston, where he was the governor general’s medalist, and a MA in physics from Princeton University, where he studied string theory and cosmology.  In early 2006, he will defend his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, where he was the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada William E. Taylor fellow.    

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.