Director
Open Society Fellowship

Leonard Benardo has been at the Open Society Institute since 1996. In that capacity he has overseen OSI’s activities in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary. In addition to directing the Open Society Fellowship, he continues to work as regional director for OSI’s efforts in these countries, and oversees a large grantmaking portfolio for Russia.

Prior to his work at OSI in New York, Benardo worked in the Moscow office of the Soros Foundation. He has also taught history and Spanish in a NYC public high school. Benardo has written for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and International Herald Tribune, and is the co-author of Brooklyn by Name: How the Neighborhoods, Streets, Parks, Bridges, and More Got Their Names (NYU Press, 2006) and Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents (William Morrow, 2009).

Alexander Cooley is an associate professor of international relations at Barnard College at Columbia University. As an Open Society Fellow, Cooley will research the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its activities in Central Asia. In particular, he is examining the SCO’s impact on regional integration and whether the SCO is sidelining Western actors by providing an alternative source of legitimacy to member states.

Cooley has written two books, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations, on how Soviet administrative legacies shaped the formation of Central Asian states; and Base Politics: Democratic Change and the US Military Abroad, which examines the political impact of U.S. military bases in overseas host countries, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

During his fellowship term, he will write scholarly and popular articles and prepare recommendations for policy makers in Washington, D.C. and Brussels, and NGOs working in Central Asia.