Robert Pape - Career

Career

Pape graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1982 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a Harry S Truman Scholar from the state of Pennsylvania, majoring in political science, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1988 in the same field. During his doctoral program he was a teaching assistant for a class taught by the high-profile realist international relations scholar John Mearsheimer. He taught international relations at Dartmouth College from 1994 to 1999 and air power strategy at the United States Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies from 1991 to 1994. Since 1999, he has taught at the University of Chicago, where he is now tenured. In the past he has done significant work on coercive air power and economic sanctions. He defines the focus of his current work as "the causes of suicide terrorism and the politics of unipolarity." In addition to his research and teaching duties, Pape has been the director of the graduate studies department of political science as well as the chair of the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. Since 1999 he has co-directed the Program on International Security Policy with Mearsheimer, and since 2004 he has directed CPOST.