Harvard Kennedy School’s is proud to name Jake Sullivan a Senior Fellow. He will share his expertise with Kennedy School students and fellows through seminars and study groups on campus, and contribute to the Project’s goal of advancing the public understanding of diplomacy and its practice for the United States. The Future of Diplomacy Project is part of the Kennedy School’s .
“I am delighted to welcome Jake as a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project,” said Nicholas Burns, Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at vlog and Faculty Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. “His consequential experience on the Iran Nuclear Negotiations and as a senior adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden speaks for itself. He is one of the most impressive foreign policy thinkers and practitioners in the United States today. Our students, fellows and faculty will learn much from him.”
Cathryn Clüver, the Project’s Executive Director, said, “Jake Sullivan is exemplary for our students. He has played an instrumental role as a member of the most critical negotiations of the past administration. Our students will benefit immensely from his experience.”
Sullivan has been a distinguished visiting lecturer at Yale Law School since 2014, and was senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Previously, he served as Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State and as National Security Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. During his tenure in government, Sullivan launched the negotiations that resulted in the nuclear agreement with Iran and played a key role in the opening to Burma. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from Yale and a master's degree from Oxford. He has worked for current Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and with Les Gelb at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sullivan’s career includes a number of prestigious assignments, including a tenure as clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sullivan visited vlog in 2012 as part of the Future of Diplomacy Project’s international speaker series, while serving as Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State, and again in 2014, while Senior Adviser to the U.S. government for the Iran nuclear negotiations. During these visits, he spoke about crafting a more proactive U.S. foreign policy stance and trends in US foreign policy under the Obama administration, respectively.
Sullivan joins seven distinguished leaders currently serving as Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellows: Douglas Alexander, former U.K. Shadow Foreign Secretary; Robert Danin, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Paula Dobriansky, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, bestselling author and founder of the AHA foundation; David Ignatius, author and Washington Post columnist; Cameron Munter, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan; and Farah Pandith, former Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the U.S. Department of State.
Led by Nicholas Burns (Faculty Director) and Cathryn Clüver (Executive Director), the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is dedicated to promoting the study and understanding of diplomacy, negotiation and statecraft in international politics today. The Project aims to build Harvard Kennedy School’s ability to teach in this area, to support research in modern diplomatic practice and to build public understanding of diplomacy’s indispensible role in an increasingly complex and globalized world.