Schelling and Neustadt winners announced

An international trade theorist and a longtime judge and international war crimes prosecutor are recipients of the 2007 Thomas C. Schelling and Richard E. Neustadt Awards. The awards were announced during a May 4 event hosted by the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, was presented with the Thomas C. Schelling Award, bestowed annually to an individual whose “remarkable intellectual work has had a transformative impact on public policy.”

Richard J. Goldstone, former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (1994-2003) and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, was presented with the Richard E. Neustadt Award. The annual award is given to an individual who has created “powerful solutions to public problems, drawing on research and intellectual ideas as appropriate.” Both recipients were awarded a $25,000 prize.

The David Rubenstein Fund for Kennedy School Excellence provided funding for the awards. The fund was established in 2004 by a $10 million gift from Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms.

“These awards are the highest Kennedy School honor. They recognize the extraordinary wisdom, vision, and significance of the ideas and work of these individuals. We’re proud to honor them in the name of two of the people who were so instrumental in the creation of the modern Kennedy School,” said KSG Dean David Ellwood.

Bhagwati is recognized for his lifetime of work in the field of international trade. He is considered the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade. He has served as an economic policy adviser to Arthur Dunkel, director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1991 to 1992; as special adviser to the United Nations on globalization; and as external adviser to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Bhagwati has published more than 300 articles and has authored or edited over 50 volumes. He also writes frequently for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times.

Goldstone is considered one of the most eminent international law jurists in the world. From August 1994 to September 1996, he served as chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He also served as chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo from August 1999 to December 2001. Goldstone is presently co-chairperson of the Human Rights Institute for the International Bar Association. He is a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on a number of boards, including the Human Rights Institute of South Africa, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Thomas C. Schelling and Richard E. Neustadt were instrumental in the founding of the modern-day Kennedy School. Schelling, the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy Emeritus, is internationally renowned for his work on game theory, specifically in regards to the dangers of nuclear war. He received the 2005 Nobel Prize for economics. Schelling has held various positions in the White House and the executive office of the president, and is now Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Neustadt, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, was an eminent presidential scholar and adviser to three U.S. presidents who served as founding director of the Institute of Politics from 1965 to 1971. He served as associate dean of the Kennedy School until 1975. Neustadt died in 2003.