Henry D. Sokolski is the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues among policymakers, scholars, and the media. He teaches graduate-level classes on nuclear policy in Washington, D.C.

From 1989 to 1993, Sokolski served as the Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, for which he received the Secretary of Defense’s Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Prior to this, he worked in the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment on strategic weapons proliferation issues.

In addition to his Executive Branch service, Mr. Sokolski worked on the Hill from 1984 through 1988 as senior military legislative aide to Senate Armed Services Committee member Dan Quayle and from 1982 through 1983 as special assistant on nuclear energy matters to TVA Subcommittee Chairman Senator Gordon J. Humphrey.

He also worked as a consultant on nuclear weapons proliferation issues to the Intelligence Community’s National Intelligence Council; received a Congressional appointment to the Deutch Proliferation Commission, which completed its report in July 1999; served as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Senior Advisory Panel from 1995 to 1996; and was a member of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which operated until 2010.

Mr. Sokolski has authored several books on nuclear proliferation, including China, Russia, and the Coming Cool War (2024), Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (second edition, 2019), and Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation (2001), and edited 35 others, which can be found here.

Mr. Sokolski has been a resident fellow at the National Institute for Public Policy, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution. He also has taught public policy courses at the University of Chicago, Rosary College, Georgetown University, Loyola University, University of Utah, and the Institute of World Politics.

Mr. Sokolski attended the University of Southern California and Pomona College and completed his graduate studies in political science at the University of Chicago.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and IISS and is on the editorial board of The Nonproliferation Review. In a detailed 2018 profile of Mr. Sokolski, Congressional Quarterly described him as one of Washington’s key “influencers”— a rare Washingtonian willing to play “a longer game.” The National Journal recognized Mr. Sokolski as one of the ten key individuals whose ideas will help shape the policy debate on the future of nuclear weapons.