Vice Chairman and Executive Director of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America. Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, since 1993, at Northeastern University. PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and is interested in the study of the former socialist societies, with special emphasis on Russia.

His current research is on education and economic development. He is also a Fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Centre, Editor of three journals and member of the Executive Committee of the Club of Madrid.

He is the author of Koops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union (with W. Moskoff, Indiana University Press); and the editor of Soviet Social Problems (Westview Press), Professions and the State (Temple University Press), Perestroika and the Economy (Sharpe Publishers), In Search of Pluralism (Westview Press), The Great Market Debate in the Soviet Economy (Sharpe Publishers), and Education and Society in the New Russia (Sharpe).

He is also member of the Advisory Committee of FRIDE.