Dr. Katz earned a BA in international relations from the University of California at Riverside, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a PhD in political science from M.I.T. He writes on Russian foreign policy, the international relations of the Middle East,  transnational revolutionary movements, and other subjects. He has been a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, held a temporary appointment as a Soviet affairs analyst at the U.S. Department of State, was a Rockefeller Foundation international relations fellow, and was a Kennan Institute research scholar and research associate. He has also received a U.S. Institute of Peace fellowship and grant, and several Earhart Foundation fellowship research grants. Recently, he was a visiting scholar at the Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center, and at the Kennan Institute.

Dr. Katz is the author of The Third World in Soviet Military Thought (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), Russia and Arabia: Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Arabian Peninsula (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), Gorbachev's Military Policy in the Third World (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1989), Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves (St. Martin's Press, 1997), and Reflections on Revolutions (St. Martin's Press, 1999). He is also the editor of The USSR and Marxist Revolutions in the Third World (Wilson Center/Cambridge University Press, 1990), Soviet-American Conflict Resolution in the Third World (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1991), and Revolution: International Dimensions (CQ Press, 2001).