Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott Elected Brookings President

1/24/2002

From: Colin Johnson of the Brookings Institution, 202-797-6310; Web site: www.brookings.edu

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 -- Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state and a distinguished foreign affairs author and journalist, will become president of the Brookings Institution Sept. 1. He is currently the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, which sponsors interdisciplinary research and teaching, as well as collaboration with other universities and non-governmental organizations.

Talbott, 55, was elected the sixth president of one of the nation's oldest public policy research institutions by a unanimous vote of the Brookings Board of Trustees today, following an eight-month search.

In announcing the selection, Brookings Chairman James A. Johnson said, "I am confident that Strobe Talbott will be an outstanding leader of Brookings. In addition to his keen intellect and deep background in key public policy issues, he will provide the energy, the judgment, and the sense of balance and fairness that our unique institution requires."

"This is a great honor and opportunity," said Talbott. "Sound policy depends on non-partisan, independent research and analysis of the kind that Brookings has generated for more than eight decades. I have long admired the Brookings Institution's reputation for excellence and objectivity, which is an invaluable asset for its ongoing mission. I look forward to working with a superb team of scholars in ensuring the preeminence and impact of the Institution in the years ahead."

Talbott will succeed Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, who announced last year that he would retire in 2002 following the selection of his successor. Armacost has served as president of Brookings since 1995.

Mike Armacost said, "I am delighted with the selection of Strobe Talbott as the next president of Brookings. He has all the attributes necessary for success. He is the author of thoughtful, critically acclaimed, policy-oriented books. He has been an exemplary public servant. He possesses in rich abundance the values that are at the core of this institution: collegiality, civility, personal integrity, and a commitment to detached, independent scholarship on the most urgent national issues. And he is widely known and respected within the policymaking community here and abroad."

Johnson added, "Strobe is fortunate indeed to inherit from Mike Armacost an extremely healthy institution. Mike has guided Brookings to a new level of intellectual excellence and policy impact."

Talbott will lead a staff of 277, including a number of the world's leading public policy scholars, and preside over an endowment of over $200 million. This year, Brookings scholars will publish more than fifty volumes of research in the Institution's core areas of politics and government, international affairs, and economic studies.

Yale's President, Richard C. Levin, has indicated an interest in pursuing the possibilities for future collaboration between Yale and Brookings.

Talbott served in the State Department from 1993 until 2001, for a year as special advisor to the secretary of state for the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union and then for seven years as deputy secretary of state.

He entered government service after twenty-one years as a journalist for Time magazine. His last position there was as Time's editor-at-large and foreign affairs columnist. Prior to that, he was Washington bureau chief, diplomatic correspondent, White House correspondent, State Department correspondent, and Eastern Europe correspondent, based in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Talbott is the author of six books on U.S.-Soviet relations and nuclear arms control. He translated and edited two volumes of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, published in 1970 and 1974. Most recently, he was co-editor, with Nayan Chanda, of "The Age of Terror: America & the World after September 11," published last month by Basic Books and the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. His next work, "The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Personal Diplomacy," will be published by Random House in May. He has twice won Georgetown University's Edward Weintal Prize for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and diplomacy, and his contributions were also cited in three Overseas Press Club Awards to Time magazine.

Before entering government, Talbott served as a fellow of the Yale Corporation, a trustee of the Hotchkiss School, a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Trilateral Commission. Since leaving government, he has rejoined the Carnegie board and the Trilateral Commission.

Following his graduation from Yale, Talbott spent three years at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. A native of Dayton, Ohio, he and his wife, Brooke Shearer, have two sons, Devin, a student at Georgetown University Law Center, and Adrian, a senior at Amherst College.