Political Science Faculty

Timothy W. Crawford teaches courses on international security, causes of war, the United Nations, and intelligence. His research interests include alliance politics, coercive diplomacy, and intelligence cooperation. His current projects focus on wedge strategies and dividing alliances in great power politics, and on the life cycles of military alliances.

His new books are: International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.

The Power to Divide: Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition, Cornell University Press, 2021. 

He is also the author of Pivotal Deterrence: Third Party Statecraft and the Pursuit of Peace (Cornell, 2003), which was the winner of the 2003 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award. He is also co-editor with Alan J. Kuperman of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion, and Civil War (Routledge, 2006).

Before joining the faculty at Boston College, Crawford taught courses at Columbia University and in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He has held fellowships at the Brookings Institution, Princeton University’s Center of International Studies, and on Harvard University’s Olin Institute of Strategic Studies, and was a Council on Foreign Relations term member.