Katz earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of California at Riverside (1976); an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (1978); and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1982). He has been teaching at George Mason University since 1988. He is the author of Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).