Former US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter will be at UT on Wednesday, March 5, to deliver the semiannual Ashe Lecture sponsored by the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.
Munter’s talk, “Beyond 2014: American Relations with Pakistan,” begins at 5:30 p.m. in the center’s Toyota Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.
“We’re very pleased to have the former ambassador join us,” Baker Center Director Matt Murray said. “He’s served in some of the most interesting—and volatile—places on earth. It will be fascinating to hear an insider’s account of what’s happening behind the news headlines.”
Munter served as a US foreign service officer for nearly three decades before his retirement in 2012. He was ambassador to Pakistan from 2010 to 2012, guiding US-Pakistani relations through a period of severe crisis, including the operation against Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. He served as ambassador to Serbia from 2007 to 2009, where he negotiated Serbian domestic consensus for European integration while managing the Kosovo independence crisis.
Aside from his time serving as ambassador, Munster also has served twice in Iraq, as leader of the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in 2006 and then as deputy chief of mission in Baghdad in 2010. He has held a number of posts in Washington, including director for Central Europe at the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and chief of staff of the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office at the Department of State.
Former Secretary Hillary Clinton awarded Munter the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award in 2012, which recognizes individuals for outstanding leadership and significant accomplishment over a sustained period of time in the field of foreign affairs. He was also the recipient of the Gold Medal of the Polish Army and the Czech Republic’s Masaryk Medal.
Munter is now a professor of international relations at Ponoma College in Claremont, California.
Munter graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University and earned a doctoral degree in modern European history from the Johns Hopkins University.
The Ashe Lecture series, funded by former ambassador and Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, hosts former mayors, ambassadors, and other public servants to discuss important issues. For more information, visit the Baker Center’s website.
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C O N T A C T :
Nissa Dahlin-Brown (865-974-8681, nissa@utk.edu)