Carol R. Saivetz is a senior fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program, as well as an associate at the Davis Center and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI). She holds an M.I.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and a certificate from what is now Columbia's Harriman Institute. In 1995-2005 she was the executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and between 1992 and 2006 a lecturer in government at Harvard. She is currently teaching Russian foreign policy in the Political Science Department at MIT.
Professor Saivetz has consulted for the U.S. government on topics ranging from energy politics in the Caspian and Black Sea regions and questions of stability in Central Asia to Russian policy toward Iran. She is the author and contributing co-editor of five books and numerous articles on Soviet and now Russian foreign policy issues, including Russian policy toward the other Soviet successor states, the many facets of Russia's war against Ukraine, Russian policy toward Turkey, and current U.S.-Russian relations. She has also published opinion pieces on the Ukraine crisis, Russian intervention in Syria, and Russian approaches to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh for the Lawfare Blog (Brookings) and commented on events in Russia, Syria, and the Ukraine war for local radio and TV. She is the co-chair of the MIT seminar series "Focus on Eurasia" sponsored by the MIT Security Studies Program, the Center for International Affairs, and MIT-Eurasia.