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Professor of History

Robert Crews

Professor of History
Robert D. Crews is an historian whose research and teaching interests focus on Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, Russia, Islam, and Global History. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he received an MA in History from Columbia University and a PhD degree in History from Princeton University.

He is the author of Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015) and For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Harvard University Press, 2006) - in Russian translation as За пророка и царя: ислам и империя в России и Центральной Азии (Москва: Новое литературное обозрение, 2020) and co-editor of Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands (Harvard University Press, 2012) and The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (Harvard University Press, 2008). His work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The New York Times.

He has served as Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Afghanistan (The American Institute of Afghanistan Studies/Edinburgh University Press).

A 2009 Carnegie Scholar, Crews received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching for First Years of Teaching, 2006-2007, the El Centro Chicano Faculty Appreciation Award in 2011, and the Stanford College Prep Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award, Summer 2012. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Kennan Institute, the Carnegie Corporation, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Academy of Korean Studies, and others.

His course offerings in 2020-2021 include “The Islamic Republics: Politics and Society in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan" (Winter), “The Global Drug Wars" (Spring), "Global History: Modern Times" (Spring), and "Global Islam" (Summer).