Full Name
Dr. Sharon Weiner
Job Title
Professor
Company
American University
Speaker Bio
Sharon K. Weiner is Associate Professor at the School of International Service. Her research, teaching, and policy engagement are at the intersection of organizational politics and U.S. national security. Her current work focuses on the theory, practice, and social construction of deterrence, the politics of U.S. nuclear weapon modernization programs, and larger issues of civil-military relations.
From August 2014 through February 2017 Weiner served as a program examiner with the National Security Division of the White House Office of Management and Budget, where she had responsibility for budget and policy issues related to nuclear weapons and nonproliferation. Her previous government service includes the Joint Staff's Strategic Plans and Policy directorate, the House Armed Services Committee, and as an advisor to the office of a U.S. Senator.
She has held research positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Center for National Security Studies and at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
Weiner's book, Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (MIT Press 2011) explored the role of organizational and partisan politics in the success and failure of U.S. cooperative nonproliferation programs with the former Soviet Union. The book won the 2012 Louis Brownlow award from the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration for its “outstanding contribution to the literature of public administration [and] new insights and original ideas about the role and behavior of governmental institutions and programs in the area of national security.”
Her scholarly work has appeared in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Polity, The Nonproliferation Review, Daedalus, Contemporary Security Policy, as well as other journals. She recently completed a book on U.S. civil-military relations and the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Her current projects include using Virtual Reality to better understand the assumptions of rationality and strategy in nuclear decision making during a crisis (thenuclearbiscuit.org), and an exploration of relationships between conceptions of deterrence and social and political structures, processes, and culture.
From August 2014 through February 2017 Weiner served as a program examiner with the National Security Division of the White House Office of Management and Budget, where she had responsibility for budget and policy issues related to nuclear weapons and nonproliferation. Her previous government service includes the Joint Staff's Strategic Plans and Policy directorate, the House Armed Services Committee, and as an advisor to the office of a U.S. Senator.
She has held research positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Center for National Security Studies and at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
Weiner's book, Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (MIT Press 2011) explored the role of organizational and partisan politics in the success and failure of U.S. cooperative nonproliferation programs with the former Soviet Union. The book won the 2012 Louis Brownlow award from the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration for its “outstanding contribution to the literature of public administration [and] new insights and original ideas about the role and behavior of governmental institutions and programs in the area of national security.”
Her scholarly work has appeared in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Polity, The Nonproliferation Review, Daedalus, Contemporary Security Policy, as well as other journals. She recently completed a book on U.S. civil-military relations and the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Her current projects include using Virtual Reality to better understand the assumptions of rationality and strategy in nuclear decision making during a crisis (thenuclearbiscuit.org), and an exploration of relationships between conceptions of deterrence and social and political structures, processes, and culture.
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