Nicholas Burns will return to Harvard in spring 2025 as the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He will become Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Faculty Member at Harvard’s Fairbank Center on China. Ambassador Burns will also be Co-Chair of the Aspen Strategy Group/Aspen Security Forum and Vice Chairperson of the Cohen Group. He is a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Honorary lifetime member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Burns served for over three decades in the United States government. Most recently (2021-2025), he was U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China where led a team from forty-eight U.S. government agencies at the U.S. Mission to China, including the embassy in Beijing and at the American Consulate Generals in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Shenyang. During his three-year tenure in China, he helped to stabilize relations with China and, at the same time, to compete with the Chinese government on the full range of military/security, economic, technology, trade, commercial, consular and human rights issues. Prior to his service in China, Burns was a Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for thirteen years from 2008 until his confirmation as Ambassador to China in 2021. During this period, he also served as a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board of Secretary of State John Kerry from 2014 - 2017. He has had a long career in American diplomacy serving six Presidents and nine Secretaries of State of both parties. While serving as a career Foreign Service Officer, he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2005-2008) where he led negotiations on the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Deal, a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel and on Iran’s nuclear program. As Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), he led U.S. efforts in Brussels on 9/11 when the Alliance invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in defense of the United States for the first time in its history. He led the combined State-Defense Department U.S. Mission when NATO expanded with seven new members from Eastern Europe and when NATO embarked on military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesperson (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990-95) on the National Security Council at the White House where he served as Senior Director and Special Assistant to President Clinton for Russia and Ukraine Affairs and Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H. W. Bush. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem (1985-1987) where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and, before that, at the American Embassies in Egypt (1983-1985) and Mauritania (1980). He started his government career as an intern at the Commerce and State Departments in Washington D.C. during the Jimmy Carter Administration. Ambassador Burns has received 15 honorary degrees, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Aspen Strategy Group’s Leadership Award, Boston College’s Ignatian and Alumni Achievement Awards, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from Johns Hopkins University, the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University and many other honors. He has a Bachelor of Arts in History from Boston College (1978), a Master of Arts in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980) and earned a Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1977).
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Fred Logevall and Alan Price
John F. Kennedy Library
Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) and Errin Haines, Editor-at-Large for The 19th*
John F. Kennedy Library
Daniel W. Drezner is Professor of International Politics, a nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the co-director of Fletcher's Russia and Eurasia Program. Prior to joining The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has previously held positions with Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and received fellowships from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard University. Drezner has written seven books, including All Politics is Global and Theories of International Politics and Zombies, and edited three others, including The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence. He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals as well as in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Foreign Affairs, and has been a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and the Washington Post. He received his B.A. in political economy from Williams College and an M.A. in economics and PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Join us for this installment of our popular Chat & Chowder series, featuring former Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan. Ambassador Sullivan will discuss his new book "Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir From The Front Lines Of Russia's War Against The West." Chat & Chowder programs are an excellent opportunity to engage with expert speakers and to network with other globally-oriented participants in an informal environment. Each event features a presentation, audience Q&A, dedicated time for networking, and (of course!) a selection of chowders and beverages. Thanks to the generous support of The Lowell Institute, Chat & Chowder is now free of charge for all participants (Zoom live-streams remain free as well). We sincerely appreciate The Lowell Institute’s commitment to our mission, as well as the support of our venue, Foley & Lardner LLP. Please consider helping sustain this work by making a contribution here. This program will be streamed to Zoom from 6:15 to 7:15. To attend the program virtually, please register for the Zoom webinar. Advance registration is required. We cannot accommodate walk-ins for the in-person program.
Foley & Lardner LLP
Moderator: Alexi Cohan, Program Moderator Alexi Cohan is a digital producer for GBH News specializing in politics, digital video, and special projects. She also reports stories for GBH News' website and radio, and is the lead producer on Politics IRL, a video series centering Gen Z voters. Before coming to GBH, Alexi was a reporter at The Boston Herald covering health and education. Alexi is a graduate of Hofstra University, where she studied journalism and Spanish. Alexi is from East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and currently lives in the Boston area.
Old South Meeting House
Foley & Lardner LLP
Margery Eagan, co-host of GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College professor of history Eileen McNamara, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Boston Globe columnist and Brandeis professor emerita of the practice of journalism
John F. Kennedy Library
Rohit Lamba is the coauthor of Breaking the Mold: India's Untraveled Path to Prosperity, assistant professor of economics at Cornell University and visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. He previously worked as an economist at the office of the chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
Foley & Lardner LLP
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