Chester A Crocker Author & Editor

Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University and a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innnovation (CIGI). His teaching and research focus on conflict management and regional security issues. He served as chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace (1992-2004) and as a board member for many years thereafter. From 1981-1989, he was U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs. As such, he was the principal diplomatic architect and mediator in the prolonged negotiations among Angola, Cuba, and South Africa that led to Namibia's transition to independence, and to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. Dr. Crocker served as a staff officer at the National Security Council (1970-72) where he worked on Middle East, Indian Ocean, and African issues and director of African studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1976-80). He serves on the boards Universal Corporation, Inc., a leading independent trading company in tobacco and agricultural products; Good Governance Group Ltd, a business intelligence advisory service; and Bell Pottinger USA, a communications and public relations firm. Dr. Crocker is a founding member of the Global Leadership Foundation, the Africa-based Housing for HIV Foundation and member of the Independent Advisory Board of the World Bank. Dr. Crocker is the author of High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (1993), co-author (with Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall) of Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases (2004), and coeditor of Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (2007), Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (2005); Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (2001); and Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (1999). Fen Osler Hampson is chancellor's professor and director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Pamela R. Aall is a senior fellow at Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the former vice president for United States Institute of Peace's domestic programs, Education and Training Center. Before joining the Institute in 1993, she was a consultant to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and to the Institute of International Education. She held a number of positions at the Rockefeller Foundation. She has also worked for the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam and Brussels), the International Council for Educational Development (New York), and the New York Botanical Garden. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.A. from Columbia University and attended the London School of Economics, conducting research on political and economic integration in Scandinavia and Europe.