The Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Affairs was established in 1986. It is named in honor of a 1935 Hamilton graduate who served as ambassador to the Organization of American States, chairman of the board of Xerox and co-negotiator of the Panama Canal treaties. He was President Jimmy Carter's representative in the the Middle East negotiations from 1979 to 1981. The holder of the Linowitz chair teaches an upper-level seminar course while at Hamilton.
Ambassador Abramowitz retired in 1997 as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He also served recently as the acting president of the International Crisis Group -- a multi-national, nongovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels and Washington, focusing on crisis prevention.
He joined the Foreign Service in 1960 after attending Stanford and Harvard, and serving in the United States Army. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment in August 1991 he was ambassador to Turkey. He has also served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, United States ambassador to the mutual and balanced force reduction negotiations in Vienna, ambassador to Thailand, deputy assistant secretary of defense for inter-American, East Asian and Pacific affairs, and special assistant to the secretary of defense. He served in Hawaii as political advisor to the commander-in-chief, Pacific.
Abramowitz is the author (with Richard Moorsteen) of Remaking China Policy (1972); Moving the Glacier: The Two Koreas and the Powers (1972); East Asian Actors and Issues (1991); and China: Can We Have a Policy? (1997). Since 1994 he has published numerous articles and essays on subjects ranging from American foreign policy to issues in the former Yugoslavia. They have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Joseph C. Wilson Award for International Service from the University of Rochester in 1980, the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Service from in 1981, 1985, and 1988. He also won the National Intelligence Medal in 1989, and the Director General's Cup of the Foreign Service in 1995. He serves on the board of many nonprofit organizations, including the International Rescue Committee, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Institute.
Previous Linowitz professors have included Bruce Laingen, former Iranian hostage and president of the American Academy of Diplomacy; Samuel Lewis, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel; Roy Atherton, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt; Richard N. Haass, director of National Security Programs and senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations; Stephen Bosworth, president of the U.S. -Japan Foundation and former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines; Harry G. Barnes, Jr., U.S. former ambassador to Chile, India and Romania; and Gideon Raphael, former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom and Belgium, and permanent representative to the United Nations.
Ambassador Linowitz is a former senior partner in the international law firm of Coudert Brothers and the author of The Betrayed Profession, a critical look at the legal profession. He currently serves as honorary chairman of the Academy for Educational Development and is a life trustee of Hamilton College.
