Beissinger received his bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Duke University in 1976 and his doctorate in political science from Harvard in 1982.
He served as chair of the UW-Madison Political Science Department from 2001 to 2004 and was the founding director of Wisconsin's Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia.
[3] In 2007 he was president of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES).
He is author of the books The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (2022),[5] Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (2002),[6] and Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power[7] (1988), and co-edited The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society (1990, with Lubomyr Hajda),[8] Beyond State Crisis?
Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia Compared (2002, with M. Crawford Young),[9] and Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (2014, with Stephen Kotkin).