David D. Laitin

David D. Laitin, professor of political science at Stanford University, will pursue two projects: a book on the causes of civil war, and a study of integration and trust among Russian-speaking immigrants. Laitin has completed a statistical and formal analysis of the causes of civil war, and while at the Foundation he will mine this data to develop a more complete picture of what led to war in 20 randomly selected countries. Laitin will also work on an ethnography exploring issues of trust in Russian immigrant communities in the Baltics, Brooklyn, and Israel.