Ruggie named Kirkpatrick Professor at KSG

John G. Ruggie, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, will join Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG) as the Evron and Jeanne Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs, Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. announced.

At KSG, Ruggie will teach international relations with a particular focus on globalization and global governance.

“We are honored to have John Ruggie join the Kennedy School,” Nye said. “He is an outstanding scholar and has extensive experience on the global stage. That combination will enhance the work of the school immensely.”

For the past four years, Ruggie has advised Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the positioning of the UN vis-a-vis key global challenges and constituencies, including UN-U.S. relations, UN relations with the global business community, and UN institutional reforms. Among his main responsibilities has been the Secretary-General’s Global Compact, intended to advance human rights, labor standards, and environmental principles in global corporate practices.

Ruggie also played a lead role in the preparations of Kofi Annan’s celebrated report to the UN Millennium Summit, titled “We the Peoples: The United Nations in the 21st Century,” as well as in the work of the summit itself.

“We shall miss John Ruggie,” Secretary-General Annan said. “He has been a constant source of innovative ideas and sound judgment, good humor and warm collegiality. I know that he will put all of those qualities to excellent use in educating future generations of global citizens at Harvard.”

Prior to joining the UN, Ruggie taught for many years at Columbia University, where he was dean of the School of International and Public Affairs from 1991 to 1996, and also at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Diego. Much of Ruggie’s academic work deals with long-term changes in global security, economic and environmental relations, and their implications for multilateral cooperation and the evolving global political order.

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ruggie received the 1999 International Studies Association Distinguished Scholar Award “for his contributions to the theory of International Relations and International Political Economy, his continuing engagement in the practice of world politics, and his dedication to a vision of a multilateral world.” He also received the 2000 American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award “for outstanding public service by a political scientist.”

Ruggie has held visiting appointments at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Geneva; Harvard’s Center for International Affairs; the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London; Beijing University; and the European University Institute in Florence. He has also served as president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, and on the Council of the American Political Science Association.