Alex Hybel
Susan Eckert Lynch '62 Professor, Department of Government and International Relations
Joined Connecticut College: 1991
Education
B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., The American University; M.A., Ph.D. Stanford University
Specializations
U.S. Foreign Policy
International Relations Theory
Democracy in Latin America
Alex Roberto Hybel is a native of Argentina. His research and teaching interests are in international relations theory, U.S. foreign policy, and Latin American politics. Some of the courses and seminars he currently teaches are: International Relations Theory; International Relations; Democracy in Latin America; U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Latin America; The New International System; and U.S. Foreign Policy Seminar.
In 2012, Hybel was awarded the Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Faculty Research Award, which provides a research fund to be presented annually to a member of the faculty for outstanding scholarly or artistic accomplishments.
His seventh book, US Foreign Policy-Making -- From Truman to Obama, will be published by Palgrave MacMilllan in 2014. Eight of the ten chapters of the book were co-authored with eight of his former and present students.
Hybel's previous book is titled The Power of Ideology (Routledge, 2009.) His fifth book, The Bush Administrations and Saddam Hussein: Deciding on Conflict, was co-authored with Connecticut College graduate Justin Kaufman '04 (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2006.)
His other major publications include: The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict (1986); How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America (1990); Power Over Rationality: The Bush Administration and the Gulf Crisis (1993); and Made by the U.S.A. - The International System (2001).
Professor Hybel has received research and teaching grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the Pew Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation. He was named Susan Eckert Lynch Professor of Government in 1995.
Professor Hybel served as Associate Director for Research for the Toor-Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (1992-94); Associate Dean of Faculty for Administration (1993-94); and Dean of National and International Programs (1994-97).
During the 1998 fall semester, he led a group of 13 students on a Study Away/ Teach Away (SATA) program to the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He also led the SATA Seville, Spain program: "Spain, Democratization and International Politics" in the Spring of 2007.
During the 2007-08 academic year, Hybel was the Fei Yi-Ming Visiting Professor at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Najing, China.
View the government and international relations department website.
Reviews of Alex Hybel's books:
" No activity of state demands more of its citizens or evokes more fervent emotions than does war. Yet few are subject to less hard analysis by those who make the critical decisions. This distressing axiom is splendidly illustrated by Alex Hybel and Justin Kaufman. With precision and intellectual objectivity they demonstrate on both a theoretical and practical level how emotion and wishful thinking supplanted rationality in the two Iraq wars. " - Foreword by Ronald Steel, author of Temptations of a Superpower, to Hybel's and Kaufman's book, The Bush Administrations and Saddam Hussein: Deciding on Conflict
"The book is perhaps the most inclusive short description yet written of how the United States became the world's primary hegemon at Cold War's end. It is also totally convincing, leaving in intellectual tatters the work of those who consider correct ideology to be determinative." - Review in "Parameters: Journal of the United States Army War College," Summer 2002, of Hybel's book Made by the USA: The International System
"This is a provocative book, not just because it advances a critical theory or a counter-intuitive interpretation but also because it poses important and tough questions about some crucial issues of both social science inquiry and contemporary U. S. foreign policy." - James N. Rosenau, from the Foreword of Hybel's book Power Over Rationality (1993)
