Welcome to the Marshall Center

Dr. Sharyl Cross

Professor of International Security and Politics
George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies

Sharyl Cross has been a professor in the College of International and Security Studies at the Marshall Center since 2005. Dr. Cross has served as director of studies for both the Program in Advanced Security Studies and Senior Executive Seminar. She has also taught in the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies, and offers an elective course on United States-Russia/Eurasia security issues. Dr. Cross directed the Marshall Center project on countering ideological dimensions of terrorism involving participation of 60 nations, and routinely lectures for the NATO School in Oberammergau Germany.

Dr. Cross came to the Marshall Center from the United States Air Force Academy, where she had been appointed visiting distinguished professor of political science. She is a tenured full professor and former chair of the San Jose State University Department of Political Science in the California State University system.

In 1999, she was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to support affiliations as visiting research scholar and professor at the Institute of USA & Canada Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Dr. Cross held prior appointments as a post-doctoral scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and as a visiting professor of transregional studies at the United States Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. She has been the recipient of three (2001, 2004, 2006-2007) post-doctoral research grants at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. In 2005, she was invited to serve as visiting professor of trans-Atlantic relations at the Institute of Political Studies/Sciences Po in Lille France.

Dr. Cross has edited three major books in security studies with specialists from Russia and China, and has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed academic journals and books.  She has consulted for the U.S. State Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. European Command, and the U.S. Congress. Dr. Cross earned a Ph.D. in political science with concentrations in international relations, comparative politics, and American foreign and security policy from the University of California, Los Angeles. She was a resident fellowship scholar & consultant completing the graduate program in Soviet/Russian studies at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.  Originally from Arizona, Dr. Cross graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest distinction in political science from the University of Arizona in 1983.

Dr. Cross' current research and teaching interests include United States-Russian security relations; Russian international behavior; NATO-Russia and security issues; Russia-China security relations; ideological, public diplomacy, and information/new media factors in international security and counter terrorism; religious dimensions in security, war and conflict resolution; democratization and security sector reform (regional interests: Russia, South East Europe, Euro-Atlantic security relations).