Jeffrey W. Legro

Jeffrey W. Legro, non-resident senior fellow, is University Professor at the University of Richmond, where he was also the executive vice president and provost from 2017 to 2023. Before that he was the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor and vice provost for global affairs at the University of Virginia. At UVA's Miller Center of Public Affairs, he was the Randolph P. Compton Professor of World Politics from 2007 to 2012 as well as the co-founder of the Governing America in a Global Era Program.

A specialist on international affairs, Legro is the author of numerous books and articles, including Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order and Cooperation Under Fire: Restraint During World War II. He co-edited To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine; Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World; and In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy after the Berlin Wall and 9/11.  

Legro's writing on American foreign policy, international politics, and military doctrine and strategy has been published in journals such as Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Security, American Journal of Political Science, European Journal of International Relations, Perspectives on Politics, and Cambridge Review of International Relations.

Before becoming a professor, Legro was an analyst for the Capital Group and a consultant at the RAND Corporation. Legro is a two-time recipient of a Fulbright Program grant, awarded to American scholars studying international relations, and worked as Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher at the Institute for Defense and Strategic Analysis in New Delhi, India and a Fulbright Lecturer at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.

He has chaired the American Political Science Association Task Force on U.S. Standing in the World and is the past president of the APSA’s International History and Politics section. He has served as a consultant to governments and foundations and been involved in a number of Track II engagements.  

In 2023-24, Legro was a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science's Phelan U.S. Centre.

He has been awarded fellowships or grants from Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Institute of Peace, Ford Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and the Institute for the Study of World Politics. Legro received his MA and PhD in political science from UCLA and his BA with a double major in Russian and Economics from Middlebury College.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Richmond World Affairs Council.