Lowell Lecture

State of the State Department & Transatlantic Diplomacy

Date & Time

Nov. 16, 2020 at noon - 1 p.m.

Location

Virtual
, MA
Driving Directions

Speaker(s)

Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Ambassador Stavros Lambrinidis

Presenting Organization

WorldBoston

Topics

Current Affairs Politics

Contact

Elise Pitcairn (events@worldboston.org, 617-542-8995)

We are thrilled to have rescheduled The State of the State Department and Transatlantic Diplomacy from March to be included as the third installment of The Mission Persists 2020: A WorldBoston Event Series.

WorldBoston’s annual State of the State Department is a high-level speaking event, serving as an annual occasion to assess the strength of a critical instrument in the pursuit of U.S. national interest, within a policy context. Ambassador Nicholas Burns will be joined by E.U. Ambassador to the U.S. Stavros Lambrinidis for an exciting conversation to discuss the transatlantic relationship and diplomacy. Ambassador Nicholas Burns is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy & International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the founder and Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Faculty Chair of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship. As a career Foreign Service Officer, he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008. He was U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990–1995) on the National Security Council at the White House where he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and Director for Soviet Affairs in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Stavros Lambrinidis is the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States, as of March 1, 2019. From 2012 to February 2019, he served as the European Union Special Representative for Human Rights. In 2011, he was Foreign Affairs Minister of Greece. Between 2004 and 2011, he was twice elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with the Greek Social Democratic Party (PASOK). He served as Vice-President of the European Parliament (2009-11), Vice-President of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2004-09), and Head of the PASOK Delegation (2005-11). Between 2000 and 2004, he was Director-General of the International Olympic Truce Centre, an International Olympic Committee organization. He served as Ambassador ad personam of the Hellenic Republic (1999-2004); Secretary-General of the Greek Foreign Ministry, responsible for Expatriate Greeks (1996-99); and Chief of Staff to the Greek Foreign Minister (1996). Between 1988 and 1993 he worked as an Attorney at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C., specializing in international trade, transactions, and arbitration. He studied Economics and Political Science at Amherst College (Bachelor of Arts degree, 1984) and Law at Yale Law School (Juris Doctor degree, 1988), where he was also Managing Editor of The Yale Journal of International Law.