Henry R. Nau is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University (1973-2020). Since 2022 he is also Distinguished Scholar at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.
From 1989-2016, he directed the US-Japan- South Korea Legislative Exchange Program, semiannual meetings among Members of the US Congress, Japanese Diet, and South Korean National Assembly. During the academic year 2011-12 he was the W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Susan Louise Dyer Peace National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Professor Nau holds a B.S. degree in Economics, Politics and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Previously, he taught at Williams College and as Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Stanford, and Columbia Universities. He is the recipient of grants from, among others, the Council on Foreign Relations, National Science Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smith- Richardson Foundation, Century Foundation, Japan US Friendship Commission, Rumsfeld Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Hoover Institution. From August 1975 to January 1977 he served as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and from January 1981 to July 1983 as senior staff member and White House sherpa on President Reagan’s National Security Council responsible for G-7 Summits and international economic affairs.
Among numerous publications, he is the author of five single-authored University press books, including Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy Under Jefferson, Polk, Truman and Reagan (Princeton University Press, 2013; paperback with new preface 2015), featured in Special Issue of Orbis, see below; Perspectives on International Relations: Power, Institutions, and Ideas (Sage/CQ Press, 7th Edition, 2021); At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2002); The Myth of America’s Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (Oxford University Press, 1990) and National Politics and International Technology: Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
His most recent articles and book chapters include “Reagan’s Conservatism Is Worth Another Look,” The American Spectator, February 2024; “The Biden Doctrines,” National Review, February 2024; “Why Reagan Matters,” National Review, July 10, 2022; Why “Conservative,” Not Liberal, Internationalism? Orbis, Special Issue on Nau’s book, Conservative Internationalism, Volume 62, Issue 1, 2018, pp. 22-29; Weberian and Relationist Worldviews: What is at Stake,” in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), Uncertainty and Its Discontents (Cambridge University Press, pp. 177-216; How Restraint Leads to War,” Commentary Magazine, (September 2015; Lead Article on Front Cover); “The ‘Great Expansion:’ The Economic Legacy of Ronald Reagan,” in Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed, edited by Jeffrey L. Chidester and Paul Kengor, (Harvard University Press, 2015); and “Ideas have consequences: The Cold War and today,” International Politics, (July 2011).
He is the recipient of the State Department’s Superior Honor Award (1977), the Elliott School Harry Harding Teaching Prize (2007), and the Japanese Government’s Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (2016). From 1963-65 he served as a Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Liberty (formerly Bragg), N.C.