AMBASSADOR KARL F. INDERFURTH APPOINTED AS PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AT GW’S ELLIOTT SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Brings Wide-Ranging Expertise as Director of Flagship M.A. Program

            WASHINGTON – Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth has been appointed professor of the practice of international affairs and director of The George Washington University’s Elliott School M.A. Program in International Affairs. Inderfurth, who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian Affairs for the Clinton Administration from 1997-2001, has an unusually rich and diverse background in the practice of international affairs. 

            “Having Ambassador Inderfurth on our faculty since August 2001 was extremely fortuitous,” said GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. “His first-hand knowledge of South Asia, particularly his experience with Afghanistan and the Taliban, and his dealings with Pakistan and India, has broadened our students’ grasp of the complexity of problems in that region of the world.”

            Ambassador Inderfurth, who joined the Elliott School last semester and taught undergraduate and graduate students on a part-time basis, will now direct the flagship Master’s degree program. This program, the M.A. in International Affairs, accounts for approximately half of all of the School’s M.A. students each year.  The professor of practice position, one of three at the Elliott School, combines the theory and practice of international affairs and demonstrates to students how practitioners in the field incorporate theoretical assumptions into their decision-making practices.

           Elliott School Dean Harry Harding expressed great satisfaction with Inderfurth’s appointment and said, “As a supervisor to over 200 of our M.A. students, Ambassador Inderfurth’s unparalleled background – which includes serving as a correspondent for ABC News, working as a staff member on both Capitol Hill and at the National Security Council, and as U.S. Ambassador at the United Nations – brings to the program enormous diversity and perspective on the inner workings of government, institutions and the international media.  We are pleased and honored that he has agreed to take this prestigious position.”

           The new position was made possible by a grant from Mr. A. Michael Hoffman, Managing Partner, Palamon Capital Partners, L.L.P. of London, England.  Hoffman is a member of the Elliott School’s International Council.  His father, George W. Hoffman, was a renowned geographer at the University of Texas at Austin, who later was appointed a University Research Professor at GW and became a valuable member of the Institute for Sino-Soviet Studies, now the Elliott School’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

            Ambassador Inderfurth, whose wide-ranging career includes policy advising, diplomacy and the media, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.  He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, and earned an M.A. in politics from Princeton University.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Fulbright Association, and the Council of American Ambassadors.  He is co-author of “Decisions of the Highest Order: Perspectives on the National Security Council” and a frequent op-ed contributor to national publications.

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