Kenneth Waltz papers, 1940-2012

Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013) was a Columbia University Professor and influential scholar of Political Science and International Relations. He received a B.A. from Oberlin College in Economics and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia. In the middle of his studies he served in the Army during both World War II and the Korean War. He then taught at Columbia until 1957, after which he held positions at Swarthmore College, Brandeis University and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997 he returned to Columbia as an adjunct professor of Political Science and a Senior Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies.

Waltz was influential in helping to shape the field of International Relations. He is best known for his theory of neorealism, also called structural realism, which explains how states behave and interact with each other within the international system. Waltz's two most successful books included Man, the State, and War: a Theoretical Analysis (1959) and Theory of International Politics (1979). From 1987-1988 he was the President of the American Political Science Association and in 1999 won the association's James Madison award. His work later in life focused on nuclear weapons and he held a controversial position that nuclear proliferation would prevent nuclear war. Waltz continued to teach and write on the subject until his death in 2013.