David Laitin has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Chicago, and is currently Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He has written extensively on Africa and Eastern Europe, as well as on theory and method in the social sciences. He is best known for analyses of language politics in Somalia and the Baltic states, for his use of rational-choice theory to analyze cultural and linguistic identity and conflict, and for his spirited defense of formal modeling and methodological pluralism in the social sciences. Recent publications include Identity in Formation: the Russian-speaking Populations of the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), (w. James Fearon) “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review (2003), and “The Perestroikan Challenge to Social Science,” Politics and Society (2003).