Mary Elise Sarotte

An expert in the history of international relations, Mary Elise Sarotte is the inaugural holder of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professorship of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and on the faculty of the School's Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs. She is also a research associate at Harvard University's Center for European Studies.

Sarotte is the author or editor of six books, including The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, both of which were selected as Financial Times Books of the Year, among other distinctions and awards. Her most recent book is Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, on what the fight over NATO expansion did to Western relations with Russia.

Sarotte earned her AB in History and Science at Harvard and her PhD in History at Yale University. Following graduate school, Sarotte served as a White House Fellow, then joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge, where she received tenure before accepting an offer to return to the United States to teach at USC. She is a former Humboldt Scholar, a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.