Hal Brands, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and History  

Office Location: Rubenstein 130
Office Phone: (919) 613-4393
Email Address: henry.brands@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • History
  • International, U.S. Foreign Policy
  • National Security and Defense, Diplomacy

Education:
PhD, Yale University, 2009
M.Phil, Yale University, 2008
MA, Yale University, 2006
BA, Stanford University, 2005

Office Hours:
Mondays, 10 a.m. to noon

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Hal Brands. Latin America's Cold War. Harvard University Press, 2010. (Paperback released in 2012) [catalog.php]
  2. Hal Brands. From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World. University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
  3. Hal Brands, David Palkki. ""Saddam, Israel, and the Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified?"." International Security 36.1 (Summer, 2011).
  4. Hal Brands. "Third-World Politics in an Age of Global Upheaval: The Latin American Challenge to U.S. and Western Hegemony, 1965-1975." Diplomatic History 32.1 (January, 2008). [pdf]
  5. Hal Brands. "Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War: The Superpowers, the MLF, and the NPT." Cold War History 7 (August, 2007).
  6. Hal Brands. "Progress Unseen: U.S. Arms Control Policy and the Origins of Détente, 1963–1968." Diplomatic History 30 (April, 2006). [pdf]
  7. Hal Brands. Dilemmas of Brazilian Grand Strategy. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, September, 2010. [display.cfm]
  8. Hal Brands. Crime, Violence, and the Crisis in Guatemala: A Case Study in the Erosion of the State. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, May, 2010. [display.cfm]
  9. Hal Brands. Mexico's Narco-Insurgency and U.S. Counter-Drug Policy. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, May, 2009.

Bio/Profile
Hal Brands joined the faculty at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy in July 2010. He is a historian whose research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Cold War history, Latin American security and diplomacy, and strategic and military issues. He previously worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses outside of Washington, D.C., and he is currently a member of the RAND Corporation Grand Strategy Advisory Board. At Duke, he is an affiliate of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy and serves on the Executive Board of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies.

Brands is the author of From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (University Press of Kentucky, 2008). His second book,Latin America's Cold War (Harvard University Press, September 2010), was adapted from his dissertation, which won the John Addison Porter Prize for Best Dissertation in the Humanities at Yale University and the Mary and Arthur Wright Prize for Best Dissertation in Non-U.S. or European History at Yale.

Brands earned a PhD, MA and MPhil. in History from Yale University. He received a BA in History and Political Science from Stanford University.

Hal Brands