SAIS Announces Vali Nasr as New Dean

[IRgrad2012]

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/think-tanked/post/vali-nasr-middle-east-expert-becomes-new-sais-dean/2012/03/27/gIQAPboMeS_blog.html

The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) has announced that Middle East expert Vali Nasr has been appointed dean of the school.

Nasr, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has been a professor of international politics at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

“The nature and focus of education in international affairs are changing as global challenges require innovative approaches, greater attention to technology and addressing new demands in the job market,” said Nasr in a released statement, adding, “SAIS has a very important leadership role to play in shaping the future of education in international affairs.”

Nasr has served Republican and Democratic administrations, including as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board. For two years he served as special adviser to Richard Holbrooke, who was then the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Vali Nasr is a distinguished scholar and teacher, an adept policy analyst and adviser, a highly regarded public intellectual and an accomplished administrator,” said Ronald J. Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins, who recommended the appointment to the executive committee of the university’s board of trustees.

SAIS was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1943 to prepare students to take on major roles in foreign affairs in the postwar world.

Nasr has advised or briefed presidents and vice presidents, cabinet secretaries, congressional committees, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military leaders.

Nasr succeeds Jessica P. Einhorn, who is retiring after a decade as dean. Before Einhorn, Paul Wolfowitz served as dean from 1994 to 2001, when he became Deputy Secretary of Defense under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Nasr will begin his new post July 1.