Doyle, international relations scholar, to leave for Columbia U.

In the midst of the Wilson School's renewed efforts to recruit high profile international studies scholars, current international relations professor Michael Doyle has announced he will be leaving the University in June.

Doyle will be heading for Columbia University where he has accepted a joint appointment at Columbia Law School and School of Public and International Affairs.

"I have been very pleased to have taught at Princeton, beginning in 1977, and will miss many colleagues and friends, but I am also eager to undertake new challenges at Columbia," Doyle said in an email.

"He very much wanted a tenured appointment in a law school," Anne Marie Slaughter, dean of the Wilson School, said in an email.

Doyle's move comes at a time when the University is looking toward a renewed focus on international studies in both the Wilson School and the rest of the University.

"It is certainly a blow; Professor Doyle is an eminent scholar and celebrated practitioner with important UN experience," Slaughter said in an email. "But the School is in active hiring mode; I expect that we will recover quite quickly."

Last month Slaughter announced that Thomas Christensen — currently a politics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — will be joining the Wilson School and politics department.

Doyle holds a dual appointment in the politics department and Wilson School and has been a member of the University faculty since 1988. He also served as director of Princeton's Center of International Studies from 1997-2001.

For the past two years, Doyle has been on a public service sabbatical, serving as special advisor to U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. At the U.N. he holds the rank of assistant secretary-general while specializing on policy analysis and strategic planning. Doyle says he will continue to advise Annan while being the Harold Brown Professor of Law and International Affairs.

Doyle developed the "democratic peace" theory, which posits that democratic nations historically do not go to war against each other. He remains an authority on United Nations peacekeeping, comparative history and international relations, having written several books in those fields.

Doyle was scheduled to teach one undergraduate class next semester, but will no longer be teaching at Princeton.