PAUR Brown Home Brown Home Brown University Office of Relations Home

February 7, 2007
Contact: Deborah Baum
(401) 863-2476

Brown University Appoints Richard Holbrooke as Professor-at-Large

Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia, has accepted a five-year appointment as professor-at-large at Brown University.


Brown University Home
Media Relations Home
2006-07 Release Index
e-Subscribe

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University has appointed Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Germany, and a 1962 Brown graduate, to a five-year term as professor-at-large, based in the University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

Holbrooke

“During a long and distinguished career, Richard Holbrooke has represented the interests of his country with great skill and dedication. He has worked to secure the peace and well-being of people around the world,” said Brown President Ruth J. Simmons. “I am pleased to welcome him back to campus in this new role and look forward to his wise counsel on the University’s international activities.”

As professor-at-large, Holbrooke will be in residence periodically. He will advise students, deliver lectures, participate in various symposia, collaborate with faculty, and act as informal adviser to President Simmons, among other activities. He will work with students, especially in the fields of international relations and history.

“I am deeply honored that President Simmons has asked me to return to Brown as a professor-at-large 45 years after I graduated,” Holbrooke said. “The four years I spent at Brown were among the most important of my life. I look forward to getting to know a new generation of students and to offer something back to an institution that gave me so much.”

“We make a point of bringing experienced policy practitioners into close collaboration with academics at the Watson Institute to help connect essential research on pressing global issues with people who can effect change,” said Barbara Stallings, the Watson Institute’s director. “Ambassador Holbrooke’s appointment advances this goal, as did our recent appointment of former Senator Lincoln Chafee as distinguished visiting fellow.”

Holbrooke brings to Brown extensive experience as a diplomat. In 1993, President Clinton appointed him to serve as U.S. ambassador to Germany and in 1994 as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs. Holbrooke is widely credited as the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. In 1999, President Clinton appointed Holbrooke to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations with Cabinet rank.

During the Carter administration, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and was instrumental in normalizing American-Sino relations in 1978. He also served as the director of the Peace Corps program in Morocco in 1970.

Holbrooke is currently chairman of the Asia Society, an organization dedicated to strengthening relationships between the United States and Asia; chief executive officer of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which mobilizes the private sector against those diseases; founding chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, which advances U.S.-German cultural exchange; and vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a private equity firm. He also writes a monthly column for the Washington Post.

Holbrooke, a history major during his student years at Brown, has served as a member of the Watson Institute’s Board of Overseers and received the 1996 William Rogers Award, the Brown Alumni Association’s highest honor. He also holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brown, awarded in 1997.

Brown established the professor-at-large position to invite individuals of exceptional distinction to participate in the intellectual and academic life of the University. Other current professors-at-large include Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil; Carlos Fuentes, the distinguished author; and Shirley Brice Heath, a linguistic anthropologist.

The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University is a leading center for research and teaching on international affairs, focusing on global development, environment, security, and related issues of culture and identity.

Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call the Office of Media Relations at (401) 863-2476.

######