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Kiron Skinner
Associate Professor International Relations and Political Science in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Special Appointment to the Heinz School
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Email: kskinner@andrew.cmu.edu
Biography
Kiron K. Skinner is an associate professor of international relations and political science at Carnegie Mellon University. She also is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Skinner specializes in the study of American foreign policy, international relations theory and international security. She uses game theoretic lenses to structure her empirical research, which includes the use of several presidential archives. Skinner became interested in the role of U.S. strategy in ending the Cold War while conducting research for Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s memoir, and while assisting Condoleezza Rice with the research for her co-authored diplomatic history of German unification.
Along with Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson, Skinner co-edited the New York Times bestseller Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America; Stories In His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan and Reagan In His Own Voice. Published in 2001, these books include selections from the 670 hand-written radio commentaries the president delivered between 1975 and 1979. The commentaries covered virtually every national policy issue of the day, and the books prompted many Reagan detractors to reappraise his intellect.
Skinner discovered the commentaries and other writings such as letters and speeches among Reagan’s private papers while she was doing research into the Cold War. Reagan’s papers include thousands of letters he wrote throughout his life to friends, family and pen pals. Approximately 1,000 letters are reproduced in Reagan: A Life in Letters. Co-edited with the Andersons and published in September 2003, this book became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller.
Skinner currently is working on a book with Rice and Hoover Senior Fellow and NYU Department of Politics Chair Bruce Bueno de Mesquita that analyzes the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the rise to power of Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin.
Skinner is a member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board, and represents the Defense Policy Board on Secretary Rumsfeld’s Defense Business Practice Implementation Board. On May 28, 2004, President George W. Bush appointed Skinner to the board of the National Security Education Program, a White House entity that oversees government grants for undergraduate and graduate study of critical foreign languages and cultures. Also in the spring of 2004, Secretary Rumsfeld approved her appointment to the Executive Panel of the Navy, the board that advises the chief of naval operations.
Membership on the board of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, D.C. and the World Affairs Council in Pittsburgh are some of Skinner’s public-service activities. In the fall of 2002, she was appointed to the Legacy Committee of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission established by the United States Congress in 1999. Skinner is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.
Skinner earned an A.A. in communications from Sacramento City College, an A.B. in political science from Spelman College, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in political science and international relations from Harvard University. She has been a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for Science and International Affairs, a consultant at the RAND Corporation, a post-doctoral fellow at UCLA and an assistant professor in the Government Department at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Skinner lives mainly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hiking in the California mountains is her main hobby.
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University
