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Monica Duffy Toft

Monica Duffy Toft

Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Monica Duffy Toft is the Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a professor of International Politics.

Before joining The Fletcher School, Professor Monica Duffy Toft taught at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, she directed the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She was educated at the University of Chicago (MA and PhD in political science) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA in political science and Slavic languages and literature, summa cum laude). Prior to this, she spent four years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist. Monica’s areas of research include international security, ethnic and religious violence, civil wars and demography. Her most recent books include: Securing the Peace (Princeton, 2011); Political Demography (Oxford, 2012); and God’s Century (Norton, 2012). In addition she has published numerous scholarly articles and editorials on civil wars, territory and nationalism, demography, and religion in global politics.

Toft is a research associate of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is a supernumerary fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, a Global Scholar of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Minorities at Risk Advisory Board and the Political Instability Task Force. In 2008 the Carnegie Foundation of New York named her a Carnegie Scholar for her research on religion and violence, in 2012 she was named a Fulbright scholar, and most recently served as the World Politics Fellow at Princeton University.

US secretary of state has an expansive job that could make or break peace deals and key foreign alliances

Jan 14, 2025 05:20 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Donald Trumps nominee for secretary of state, will testify before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of his confirmation process on Jan. 15, 2025. Rubios nomination is...

Israelis and Palestinians warring over a homeland is far from unique

Dec 13, 2023 13:46 pm UTC|

The ongoing horrors unfolding in Israel and Gaza have deep-rooted origins that stem from a complex and contested question: Who has rights to the same territory? I am a scholar of international affairs, as well as...

Global Geopolitics Series

US will give military tanks to Ukraine, signaling Western powers' long-term commitment to thwarting Russia

Jan 26, 2023 12:04 pm UTC| Politics

President Joe Biden announced on Jan. 25, 2023, that the U.S. would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyys repeated requests for more military tanks to help wage its war...

The US isn't at war with Russia, technically – but its support for Ukraine offers a classic case of a proxy war

Oct 21, 2022 06:13 am UTC| Insights & Views

The United States and European countries continue to pledge their support to Ukraine as Russias invasion drags on into its ninth month and have backed their alliance with recurrent deliveries of advanced weaponry and...

America now solves problems with troops, not diplomats

Oct 04, 2019 14:42 pm UTC| Insights & Views

Is America a bully? As a scholar, under the auspices of the Military Intervention Project, I have been studying every episode of U.S. military intervention from 1776 to 2017. Historically, the U.S. advanced from a...

Identicide: How demographic shifts can rip a country apart

Apr 27, 2019 06:20 am UTC| Insights & Views

What happens to a country when its core national identity its preferred image of itself in terms of race or religion doesnt match its demographic reality? Say a Sunni-dominated Arab country is actually a majority Shia...

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Economy

Morgan Stanley Warns Against Overestimating EV Demand Boost from Rising Oil Prices

Morgan Stanley is urging caution among investors who believe that surging oil prices will automatically trigger a rapid recovery for South Korean battery manufacturers. While recent headlines have painted an optimistic...

Iran Closes Strait of Hormuz Again After Brief Reopening, Rattling Global Energy Markets

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Politics

Iran's Internal Power Struggle Threatens Strait of Hormuz Stability

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North Korea Fires Multiple Ballistic Missiles Amid Growing Nuclear Ambitions

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South Koreas Yonhap news agency reported on Saturday that North Korea launched an unidentified ballistic missile in an easterly direction. Military officials in Seoul are still analyzing the missiles type and flight...

U.S.-Iran Tensions Escalate as Hormuz Crisis Deepens Amid Ceasefire Strains

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Brazil, Spain, and Mexico Unite to Support Cuba Amid U.S. Blockade

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Science

China vs. NASA: The New Moon Race and What's at Stake by 2030

The space race is back and this time, its a direct competition between the United States and China for dominance on the lunar surface. NASAs Artemis II mission recently made history when four astronauts flew farther into...

NASA Artemis II: First Crewed Moon Mission Since Apollo Takes Four Astronauts on 10-Day Lunar Journey

NASAs Artemis II mission launched Wednesday, marking humanitys return to crewed lunar exploration for the first time since the Apollo era. Carrying four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, this historic 10-day mission...

NASA's Artemis II Mission: First Crewed Lunar Journey Since Apollo

NASAs Artemis II mission launched Wednesday, marking humanitys return to crewed lunar exploration for the first time since the Apollo era. Carrying four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, this historic 10-day mission...

NASA's Artemis II Crew Arrives in Florida for Historic Moon Mission

The four astronauts chosen for NASAs Artemis II mission have touched down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the beginning of final launch preparations for the first crewed lunar journey in over 50 years. NASA...

SpaceX Pivots Toward Moon City as Musk Reframes Long-Term Space Vision

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Technology

NVIDIA Acquisition Rumors Dismissed by Morgan Stanley as Strategically Flawed

Morgan Stanley analysts have moved to cool speculation that NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is plotting a major acquisition of a U.S. PC original equipment manufacturer (OEM). According to the investment bank, such a...

Iran’s AI memes are reaching people who don’t follow the news – and winning the propaganda war

A Lego-style Iranian military commander raps over a gangster beat: Our inbox is flooded with Americans saying they dont watch the news. They listen to our songs instead since your media is full of shit. This is the opening...

OpenAI's $20 Billion Cerebras Deal Signals Massive AI Infrastructure Push

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Tesla's Terafab: AI Chip Factory Eyes Taiwan's Semiconductor Talent

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Japan to Subsidize Sony's Image Sensor Plant in Kumamoto with $380 Million

The Japanese government has announced plans to provide Sony with subsidies of up to 60 billion yen, equivalent to approximately $380 million, to support the construction of an image sensor manufacturing facility in...
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