After graduating from the College in 1974, Rosen became a graduate student in government at Harvard. After five years, he earned his Ph.D. and stayed at Harvard for two years afterwards doing post-doctoral work. During this time, he also helped to organize a fellowship program for national security issues, which has become the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

In 1981, Rosen went to Washington to work on the staff of then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger '38, who is also a Crimson editor.

In 1984, Rosen began working at the National Security Council (NSC), contributing to strategic planning on U.S.-Iran relations. He left the NSC in the summer of 1985, shortly before congressional investigations into the Iran-Contra affair began.

"I'm glad I left when I did," Rosen says. "It was a place where people's careers were getting messed up simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Rosen's career stayed on track though. He taught at the Naval War College until 1990, when he returned to Harvard and applied for a job as an associate professor.

"I knew I wanted to write books, and I wanted to do the kind of research that one needs to write books," Rosen says.

Since becoming a professor at Harvard, Rosen has written books on military technology as well as on the military establishments of nations including India and Turkey. Much of his work focuses on combining analyses of individual psychology and nations' social structures with conventional military theory.

Rosen also teaches several courses, including a Core class, Historical Studies A-12, "International Conflicts in the Modern World," and two government seminars: "War and Politics" and "Political Psychology and International Relations."

Rosen's courses consistently receive very high rating in Harvard's Courses of Undergraduate Instruction Guide. Students polled have praised the clarity and organization of his presentations, and have described his lectures as "enthralling."

Associate Professor of Government Andrew M. Moravcsik, who has taught Historical Studies A-12 with Rosen for the past four years, attributes his colleague's successful teaching methods to several factors.

Rosen exhibits an "exceptional clarity of thought...[and] a bold and incisive mode of expression. He really has an extraordinary grasp of historical detail in many areas," Moravcsik wrote in an e-mail message.

"By the time one teaches such a course, one has learned most of the basic arguments about world politics," Moravcsik added. "Steve regularly surprises me. I am never quite sure what he is going to say."

Wendy Franz, the head teaching fellow for Historical Studies A-12 this spring, also commends Rosen's teaching style, remembering a debate that Moravcsik and Rosen held in class on U.S. involvement in Kosovo.

"He is able to argue either side of a debate equally forcefully," Franz says. "In the Kosovo debate, you could never tell whether the view he was taking was actually his own."

According to Rosen, being a professor has allowed him to spend a lot of time with his wife, two sons, and a daughter who was born this spring.

"My family is the main source of satisfaction in my life," Rosen says. "I'm better at being a dad than anything else."