Ira Straus

Chair, Center for War/Peace Studies in New York

Dr. Straus is the founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO (CEERN), an independent NGO.

From its inception in 1992, CEERN has worked for widening and deepening of NATO, widening to Russia and all democracies from the post-Soviet space, and deepening in NATO procedures so the widening would not damage NATO decision-making.

From 1985 to 1991, he served as executive director of the Association to Unite the Democracies, an organization formed in 1939 to promote a political union of the Atlantic countries with a door open to others to join as they democratize and modernize.

Dr. Straus got his B.A. in Russian history at Princeton in 1976 and wrote his dissertation in 1991 at the University of Virginia on Euro-Atlantic institutions and their relevance to the East. From 2001 to 2002, he was a Fulbright professor of political science at Moscow State University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.