Jeremi Suri

Suri has said that his parents are immigrants from India and Russia who fled some of the worst horrors of the last century, that the United States was a refuge for his family, and that history has therefore always been at the center of his thinking.⁠[1]

He earned a BA in history from Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry in 1994, an MA in history from Ohio University in 1996 and a PhD from Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry in 2001.⁠[2]

He joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison as assistant professor of history in 2001, became associate professor in 2005 and professor in 2007, and was E. Gordon Fox Professor from 2009 to 2011.⁠[3]

Before leaving Wisconsin he also directed the university’s European Union Center of Excellence.⁠[2]

In 2003 Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry Press published his 355-page Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente, which argues that 1960s unrest in Europe, the United States, Mexico, the Soviet Union and China’s Cultural Revolution prompted leaders to insulate power from the public, and that détente was a convergent response to disorder among the great powers.⁠[4]

The review judged the thesis grand yet cautious but found that it sometimes slipped into a generic wide-angle account, with a theory soft enough to absorb anything.⁠[4]

In 2007 he published the biography Henry Kissinger and the American Century, which, unlike most political biographies, explores the connections between the personal and the political, showing how Kissinger’s past as a refugee from Nazi Germany and his status as a cultural and social outsider shaped his political outlook.⁠[5]

In October 2007 he was named to Smithsonian Magazine’s first “37 Under 36: America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences”.⁠[5]

On April 17, 2008, H-Diplo published a roundtable on the book. Reviewer Barbara Keys recounted that after reading Power and Protest, Kissinger summoned Suri to his Park Avenue office and grilled him on his research for an hour and a half, and she criticized the book as an “anti-biography” with a deterministic feel.⁠[6]

Suri replied that calling Kissinger a product of his time does not mean his actions were predetermined, writing: “Context explains; it does not predict.”⁠[6]

On June 7, 2011, the University of Texas at Austin announced him as the first holder of the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, with a joint appointment in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of History, starting in fall 2011.⁠[7]

In September 2011 he published Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama, which analyzes American nation-building through cases from Reconstruction to the Philippines, Germany, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq; he identified partners, process, problem-solving, purpose and people as five elements that make success more likely, though they do not guarantee it.⁠[8]

He co-edited Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy (Oxford UniversityUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry Press, 2015) and Modern Diplomacy in Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) with Robert Hutchings and The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft (Brookings Institution Press, 2015) with Hal Brands.⁠[3]

On September 12, 2017, Basic Books published his 368-page The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office, which argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success and that the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it.⁠[9]

He was one of the 2018 recipients of the Pro Bene Meritis Award, the highest honor of UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts, and received the 2017–2018 President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award.⁠[1]

On January 31, 2018, the Texas National Security Review published a roundtable on The Impossible Presidency. Robert Cook and Kori Schake noted that early American history also had many unexceptional presidents, and David Adesnik argued that the book lacked a clear standard of success and underplayed Congress. Suri replied that his argument was not that all presidents since Franklin Roosevelt had failed but that their successors faced ever-multiplying demands at home and abroad, and that Schake was correct only to a point.⁠[10]

In April 2021 he appeared on episode 180 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, on the history of American power, with topics including charisma, the US presidency, Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger and realpolitik, just war and the Cold War.⁠[11]

On October 18, 2022, PublicAffairs published his 320-page Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.⁠[12]

The book argues that the Civil War ended only militarily at Appomattox and continued afterward through voter suppression, Jim Crow segregation and lynching, and proposes remedies including a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote; the review found few of its observations groundbreaking but judged its prescriptions meaningful.⁠[13]

On January 25, 2023, he appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast a second time (episode 354), on the American Civil War, with topics including Lincoln and the election of 1860, slavery, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, the Ku Klux Klan, disputed elections and January 6th.⁠[14]

As of October 2026 he continues to hold the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, teaching in UT Austin’s Department of History, the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Human Dimensions of Organizations, and writes the daily newsletter Democracy of Hope.⁠[15]

He hosts This is Democracy, a weekly podcast of UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts that draws on historical knowledge to inspire a contemporary democratic renaissance, bringing together guests from different generations to discuss democracy.⁠[16]

Personal website: Public link: https://jeremisuri.net/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/JeremiSuri (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremi-suri-4828577/ (opens in a new window)⁠[17]

University of Wisconsin–Madison: Official website: https://www.wisc.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

The University of Texas at Austin: Official website: https://www.utexas.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]