Avner Cohen
Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program
October 1, 2007 - July 31, 2008 and 1997-1998
ARCHIVED SPECIALIST PROFILE
Project Focus:
Addressing Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
Arms Control and Non-Proliferation | Media and Conflict | Middle East | War Crimes
Languages: Hebrew
A prominent expert on Israel’s nuclear policy and on global nuclear proliferation at large, Avner Cohen tackles the Iranian nuclear issue and considers its impact on the non-proliferation regime as well as on regional developments and perceptions about nuclear issues. He has been a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland since 2000. Previous positions include service as a senior fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. and at the MIT Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East Project, where he was also an acting codirector.
Cohen’s awards include research and writing grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a fellowship at Harvard University’s Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s designation of his book Israel and the Bomb as one of the best books in 1998. Cohen has authored and edited six books and also published numerous articles in academic journals such as Ethics, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Survival, Israel Studies, Security Studies, and The Nonproliferation Review. he has written many op-eds in leading newspapers in the United States and Israel.
Cohen holds an M.A. in philosophy from York University and a Ph.D. in the history of culture from the University of Chicago.
Publications:
- "Israel’s Airstrike on Syria’s Reactor: Implications for the Nonproliferation Regime," with Leonard S. Spector Arms Control Today, July/August 2008.
- "Cloak and Stagger," Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2008.
- Israel’s Last Taboo (Kinneret-Publishing House, 2005) (in Hebrew, American edition forthcoming, Columbia University Press).
- "Not the best intelligence," Haaretz, December 5, 2007.
- "Crossing the Threshold: The Untold Nuclear Dimension of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Its Contemporary Lessons," Arms Control Today, June 2007.
- "Israel crosses the threshold," co-authored with William Burr. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/Jun2006, Vol. 62 Issue 3, p22-30.
- "An NPT for non-members," co-authored with Thomas Graham Jr. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/Jun2004, Vol. 60 Issue 3, p40-44.
- "A view from the balcony," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar/Apr2004, Vol. 60 Issue 2, p6-9.
- Israel and the Bomb (Columbia University Press, 1998).
- The Nuclear Age: A Chapter in Moral History (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1989).
