James Traub

James Traub is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, where he has worked since 1998. He has written extensively about international affairs and especially the United Nations, as well as national politics, urban affairs and education.

In recent years, he has reported from, among other places, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Guinea Bissau, Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Georgia, Kosovo, and Haiti. His weekly column on foreign policy, "Terms of Engagement," appears on foreignpolicy.com, the website of Foreign Policy magazine.

Traub's most recent book is The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not The Way George Bush Did). In 2006 he published The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in The Era of American World Power.

Traub teaches a class on American foreign policy as part of New York University's Sheikh Mohammad Scholarship Program in Abu Dhabi. He is a senior fellow of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a fellow of the Center on International Cooperation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is currently writing a biography of John Quincy Adams and speaks regularly about foreign affairs on CNN's In The Arena, and through several other venues.