Henry Sokolski is the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues among policy makers, scholars and the media. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Sokolski previously served as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Department of Defense, for which he received a medal for outstanding public service from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. He also worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Office of Net Assessment, as a consultant to the National Intelligence Council, and as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency's Senior Advisory Group. In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Sokolski served as a special assistant on nuclear energy matters to Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-NH), and as a legislative military aide to Dan Quayle (R-IN).
He was appointed by Congress in 2008 to serve a two-year term as a member of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism and in 1999 to serve on the Deutch WMD Proliferation Commission. Mr. Sokolski has authored and edited over 20 volumes on proliferation, including Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Future (2015); Moving Beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation (2014); Nuclear Weapons Security Crises: What Does History Teach? (2013); The Next Arms Race (2012); Nuclear Power's Global Expansion: Weighing its Costs and Risks (2010); Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (2009); Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom (2008); Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice (2004); and Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation (2001).
Mr. Sokolski is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has served as a resident fellow at the National Institute for Public Policy, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution and has taught courses at the University of Chicago, the Institute of World Politics, Rosary College, and Loyola University. Mr. Sokolski attended the University of Southern California and Pomona College, and completed eight years of graduate studies in Constitutional Law, political philosophy, and military science at the University of Chicago.
He has been published by Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, The Council on Foreign Relations, The National Interest, Policy Review, The Nonproliferation Review, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and ORBIS among others and was recognized in 2004 by The National Journal as one of the ten key individuals whose ideas shape the policy debate on weapons proliferation.