Thomas M. Nichols is professor of national security affairs at the United States Naval War College, where he was previously a Secretary of the Navy Fellow, the Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy, and a chairman of the Strategy Department, for which he was awarded the Navy's Civilian Meritorious Service Medal. He is also a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City and a fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University.
In 2012, he received the Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award from Harvard Extension School. He previously taught international relations and Soviet and Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He holds a PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, a certificate of the Harriman Institute of Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia, and a BA from Boston University.
He was personal staff for defense and security affairs in the United States Senate to the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, and served as a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was also a fellow in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School.
His most recent book, No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), is an analysis of American nuclear weapons policies and proposals for the reform of US nuclear strategy