Boaz Atzili

Boaz Atzili is an Associate Professor at the School of International Service (SIS) of American University in Washington DC, and the Director of Doctoral Studies at the school.

He was born and raised in Kibbutz Zikim in the south of Israel, and is now living in Rockville, Maryland.

He holds a 2006 PhD in Political Science from MIT and a 1997 BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After earning his PhD Atzili was a postdoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, (2006-8).

Prof. Atzili teaches courses on international security and Middle Eastern politics at SIS. Before coming to American University he also taught at Boston University, Tufts University, and Bentley College.

Prof. Atzili's research interests are in the general area of international security, with emphasis on territorial conflicts and the politics of borders, deterrence and coercion, and the international aspects of state weakness and state failure. Prof. Atzili has published three books, "Good Fences Bad Neighbors," Territorial Designs and International Politics" (Edited with Burak Kadercan), and "Triadic Coercion" (with Wendy Pearlman). He has published articles in journals such as International Security, Security Studies, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, International Studies Review, and Territory, Governance, Politics.

His first book, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (University of Chicago Press, 2012) has won the Edger E. Furniss Award for the best first book in international security, by the Mershon Center for International Security, 2014.

The book is based on his dissertation that has won the American Political Science Association’s Kenneth N. Waltz prize for the best 2006 dissertation in the area of security studies.