Study Group with Brett Rosenberg

Getting It Right at Home and Abroad: The Future of Diplomacy

As our understandings of national security evolve to include more topics that cross the traditional foreign policy/domestic policy divide, so too must the role of our nation's diplomats, who carry out U.S. foreign policy around the world. How is the State Department adapting to this new approach, including by working right here in the U.S.?

GUEST: Salman Ahmed, Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State, joins Resident Fellow Brett Rosenberg in-person for the October 24 session.

Salman Ahmed is the Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. Prior to assuming his post as Director in January 20, 2021, Mr. Ahmed was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he directed research and led a bipartisan task force dedicated to making U.S. foreign policy work better for the middle class. He also oversaw the review of the national security and foreign policy agencies for the Biden-Harris Transition Team. 

He served for 8 years in the Obama-Biden administration, including as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. 

Before joining the U.S. government, he served for almost 15 years with the United Nations, working mainly on the management and reform of the UN’s international peacekeeping machinery; co-drafting the UN Secretary-General’s landmark report on the Fall of Srebrenica; and serving in field missions in Cambodia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq. He also taught at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. 

He earned an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Economics from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

AUDIENCE: These conversations are open to members of the Harvard community. Please RSVP with a valid Harvard email address.

OFF-THE-RECORD: In keeping with our long tradition at the IOP to ensure honest and candid discussions of politics, all IOP study groups are off-the-record.