Taubman is the son of Nora Stern, a teacher, and Howard Taubman, who was chief music critic and then chief theater critic for The New York Times in the 1950s and 60s.
William Taubman is the brother of diplomatic journalist Philip Taubman.
His wife, Jane A. Taubman, was a professor of Russian, Emerita, at Amherst College.
Trump and Putin in Historical Perspective: How We Got into the New Cold War, Amherst College A talk by William Taubman, the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science, Emeritus (June 6, 2017)