Stephen Philip Cohen has been Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution since 1998. In 2004 he was named as one of the five hundred most influential people in the field of foreign policy by the World Affairs Councils of America.

Professor Cohen was a faculty member at the University of Illinois from 1965 to 1998. From 1992-93 he was Scholar-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation, New Delhi, and from 1985-87, a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, where he dealt with South Asia. He has taught at Andhra University (India) and Keio University (Tokyo), Georgetown University, and now teaches in the South Asian program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

He has served on numerous study groups examining Asia sponsored by the Asia Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Foundation, and the National Bureau of Asian Research; he is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control and a trustee of the Public Education Center. Dr. Cohen was the co-founder and chair of the workshop on Security, Technology and Arms Control for younger South Asian and Chinese strategists, held for the past ten years in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and China, and was a founding member of the Research Committee of the South Asian strategic organization, the Regional Centre for Security Studies, Colombo.

Dr. Cohen has written, co-authored, or edited ten books. These include The Idea of Pakistan,(September, 2004), India: Emerging Power (June 2001, with Japanese, Indian, Chinese, and Taiwanese editions), The Pakistan Army (revised edition 1998), The Indian Army (revised edition, 2000), the co-authored Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia (1995), India: Emergent Power? and Perception, Politics, and Security in South Asia: the Compound Crisis of 1990 2003. Edited books include Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia (1990) and South Asia after the Cold War (1993) and a coauthored book on the Kargil and 2002 crises is nearing completion.

Professor Cohen received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin. He has conducted research in China, Britain, India, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, and Japan. He received grants from several major foundations and serves as a consultant to numerous government agencies.