Michael McFaul

A Conversation with Former Ambassador Michael McFaul

Moderated by Brian Whitmore, assistant professor of practice in the Charles T. McDowell Center for Global Studies

 

Wednesday, October 8, 2025
7:30 p.m. at Texas Hall

 

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University, which he joined as faculty in 1995.

He is an international affairs analyst for NBC News and writes a weekly column on global affairs at McFaul’s World on Substack.

Professor McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in international relations and slavic languages and his M.A. in soviet and east European studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in international relations at Oxford University in 1991.

McFaul served for five years in President Barack Obama’s administration, first as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-12), and then as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-14). He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University in the summer of 2015, the summer of 2019, and the spring of 2024.

He has authored and coauthored several books, including the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. He next book is Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, and the New World Order, to be published later this year by Harper Collins. His current research interests include great power relations between China, Russia, and the United States; the relationship between democracy and development; and American foreign policy.