Ambassador Negroponte Joins Yale Faculty

Ambassador John D. Negroponte, YC’60 has been appointed the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Senior Research Fellow in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in International Affairs at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

Negroponte, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, U.S. Representative to the United Nations and a four-time ambassador, will serve a three-year term beginning July 1.

Negroponte will teach courses in the undergraduate International Studies major, and the International Relations Master’s Degree program. He will also join Yale historians John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy and Yale Diplomat-In-Residence Charles Hill in co-teaching the year-long Studies in Grand Strategy Seminar, the core course in the Brady-Johnson Grand Strategy Program.

Commenting on his appointment, Negroponte said, “I am excited about returning to Yale and look forward to sharing my experience and insights as a career diplomat and national security official.”

John Gaddis, the Director of the Brady-Johnson Program, remarked that “Ambassador Negroponte brings a wealth of experience in international affairs that will be of great value to our students as they seek to connect their Yale education with the world in which they will build their future careers.”

After graduating from Yale, Negroponte joined the Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. He served in eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia, Europe, and Latin America; as well as positions at the State Department and the White House.

Among his assignments, Negroponte was Ambassador to Honduras (1981-1985), Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (1985-1987); Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1987-1989); Ambassador to Mexico (1989-1993); and Ambassador to the Philippines (1993-1996).

From 1997 to 2001, Ambassador Negroponte was employed in the private sector as Executive Vice President for Global Markets at The McGraw-Hill Companies in New York, where he oversaw the company’s international activities.

Ambassador Negroponte served as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2001 until he became U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte then became the principal intelligence advisor to President Bush and the nation’s first Director of National Intelligence in 2005, with responsibility for oversight and coordination of the nearly 100,000 Intelligence Community employees across 16 federal agencies and departments. In 2006, Negroponte took on the role of Deputy Secretary of State, the nation’s second-ranking diplomat, where he served as the Department’s Chief Operating Officer and oversaw U.S. Government activities overseas.

Ambassador Negroponte has twice received the State Department’s Distinguished Service Medal, one from Secretary of State Colin Powell and the other from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. On January 16, 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Ambassador Negroponte the National Security Medal for his outstanding contributions to U.S. national security.

In addition to his new position at Yale, Negroponte will join McLarty Associates, an international strategic advisory firm in Washington, D.C. as Vice Chairman.

Ambassador Negroponte was born July 21, 1939 in London. He and his wife, Diana, have five children.