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
Mona Yacoubian is senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has more than thirty years of experience working on the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on conflict analysis, governance and stabilization challenges, and conflict prevention. She was previously vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), where she managed field programming in Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia as well as Washington, D.C.–based staff. In 2019, she served as executive director of the congressionally appointed Syria Study Group. From 2014 to 2017, Yacoubian served as deputy assistant administrator in the Middle East Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she had responsibility for programming across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Prior to joining USAID, Yacoubian was a senior adviser at the Stimson Center and a special adviser on the Middle East at USIP. From 1990 to 1998, Yacoubian served as the North Africa analyst in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets, and she has testified to Congress six times. Yacoubian was a Fulbright scholar in Syria, where she studied Arabic at the University of Damascus from 1985 to 1986. She has held an international affairs fellowship with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and is a CFR member. She earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s in public policy from Duke University.
The NonProfit Center
Mona Yacoubian is senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has more than thirty years of experience working on the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on conflict analysis, governance and stabilization challenges, and conflict prevention. She was previously vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), where she managed field programming in Iraq, Libya, and Tunisia as well as Washington, D.C.–based staff. In 2019, she served as executive director of the congressionally appointed Syria Study Group. From 2014 to 2017, Yacoubian served as deputy assistant administrator in the Middle East Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she had responsibility for programming across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Prior to joining USAID, Yacoubian was a senior adviser at the Stimson Center and a special adviser on the Middle East at USIP. From 1990 to 1998, Yacoubian served as the North Africa analyst in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets, and she has testified to Congress six times. Yacoubian was a Fulbright scholar in Syria, where she studied Arabic at the University of Damascus from 1985 to 1986. She has held an international affairs fellowship with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and is a CFR member. She earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s in public policy from Duke University.
The NonProfit Center
Peniel Joseph and Brandon Terry
John F. Kennedy Library
Kelly Sims Gallagher is the tenth Dean of The Fletcher School, Tufts University. A Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, she also directs the Climate Policy Lab and co-directs the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher. The Climate Policy Lab is dedicated to identifying which climate policies work, which don’t, and why in countries around the world, with particular emphasis on major emerging economies including China, India, Ethiopia, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil. Gallagher served in the second term of Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor in The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Senior China Advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change office at the U.S. State Department. Gallagher is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is a member of the board of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Broadly, she focuses on U.S.-China relations, green industrialization, climate policy, energy innovation, and low-carbon, resilient models for achieving sustainable prosperity. She is the author of Titans of the Climate (The MIT Press 2018), The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China (MIT Press 2014), China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development (The MIT Press 2006), and dozens of other articles and book chapters.
The NonProfit Center
Jim O’Connell’s latest book is Boston and the Making of a Global City. He teaches in the City Planning-Urban Affairs Program at Boston University. Jim’s other books include The Hub’s Metropolis: Boston’s Suburban Development, From Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth; Dining Out in Boston: A Culinary History; and Becoming Cape Cod: Creating a Seaside Resort. Jim has a Ph.D. in Urban History from the University of Chicago. He formerly was a planner for National Park sites in New England and New York State. He leads urban planning/design tours of different areas of Boston and Cambridge.
Foley & Lardner LLP
Seán Hemingway, Michael Deagler, and Alex George
John F. Kennedy Library
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