He served as the 15th director of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University[1] and is currently the Vice Provost for Research, Libraries and Academic Centers at Barnard College.
Cooley graduated from Swarthmore College and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, studying under Hendrik Spruyt and Mark von Hagen.
[1] In 2015, he was named director of Columbia's Harriman Institute, serving in the position for six years.
[3] Cooley has written extensively about the politics of the Former-Soviet states, with an emphasis on Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as the liberal international order and democratic backsliding.
[4][5][6] His analysis of great power politics in Central Asia was called by National Bureau of Asian Research as "possibly the most cogent critique of post–Cold War orthodoxy published to date.