David Smilde is the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations, Chair of the Sociology Department, and Senior Associate at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. He was Program Chair of the Latin American Studies Association’s 2023 Congress and served as Chair of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association from 2010-12. He has researched Venezuela for over thirty years, living there for sixteen. His research focuses on culture, violence, political conflict, peacemaking, and human rights. He is an author or editor of six books, and author of thirty peer reviewed articles or chapters. He was editor of the journal Qualitative Sociology for eight years. In addition to his academic career he has done policy work with the Washington Office on Latin America, the Atlantic Council, the Wilson Center for Scholars, the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation and Luminate. He has published opinion articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Time, and El Pais, and is a frequent media commentator on the crisis in Venezuela.

2025    Smilde, David. “Venezuela’s Opposition Is Using Misinformation to Promote Regime Change.” Time. November 3.

2025 Smilde, David and Isabel Rowan Scarpino. “U.S. Foreign Policy, the Opposition, and the Maduro Government: Venezuela’s Authoritarian Slide in Ten Episodes,” Authoritarian Consolidation in Times in Crisis: Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro. John Polga Hecimovich and Raúl Sanchez Urribarí (eds.). London, U.K.: Routledge.

2025 Hanson, Rebecca, David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga. “This Is Not the Right Way to Curb Migration.” New York Times, April 4. “Esta no es la forma correcta de frenar la migración.” New York Times, April 5.