A former scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation, Urquhart has spent much of his life in the U.N. system. He is a central figure in the dialogue over renewing the United Nations system. After serving in the British Army and military intelligence during World War II in North Africa and Europe, he was a personal assistant to the first secretary-general of the United Nations, Trygve Lie. From 1954 to 1971 he acted in various capacities under American undersecretary Ralph Bunche. Over this period Sir Brian was centrally involved in the conferences on peaceful uses of atomic energy, the Congo crisis in the early 1960s, and peacekeeping in Cyprus, Kashmir and the Middle East.
From May 1972 to January 1974 Urquhart was assistant secretary-general in the office of the undersecretary-general for special political affairs. In February 1974 Urquhart was appointed as undersecretary-general for special political affairs. His main functions were the direction of peace-keeping forces in the Middle East and Cyprus and negotiations relating to these two problems, and the negotiations related to a Namibia settlement.
Urquhart was also one of the principal political advisors of the secretary- general. He retired from the United Nations Secretariat in 1986.
The author of several books, Urquhart's last major work was A World in Need of Leadership: Tomorrow's United Nations - A Fresh Appraisal (1996) with Erskine Childers. He also wrote Renewing the United Nations System with Childers in 1994, and the biography, Ralph Bunche: An American Life (1993).
Urquhart visited Hamilton College previously in 1997 when he delivered the Ralph E. and Doris M. Hansmann Lecture, and in 1996 he served as the Linowitz Professor of International Relations in Hamilton's Government department.
Hamilton's commencement ceremony will take place on the Main Quadrangle, or in the event of inclement weather, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. Approximately 440 Hamilton students will receive bachelor's degrees during the ceremony that marks the end of the college's 188th academic year.
