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Biography

Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and incoming Chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative and a new program on India and South Asia.   He is concurrently the Director of the Aspen Strategy Group.   Previously, he was a visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington D.C. in summer 2008.

Ambassador Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty seven years until his retirement in April 2008.  He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008, the State Department’s highest-ranking career official.  Prior to that, he was Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997).  Ambassador Burns worked on the National Security Council staff (1990-1995) where he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and, before that, Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush.   Earlier in his career, he worked at the American Consulate General in Jerusalem and in the American Embassies in Egypt and Mauritania.   He earned a B.A. in History from Boston College in 1978 and an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1980 where he concentrated on American Foreign Policy and International Economics.  He also earned a certificate in French from the University of Paris in 1977. 

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and serves on the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Atlantic Council, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, the Center for a New American Security and the Richard Lounsbery Foundation.