Philip Zelikow

Dr. Philip D. Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is also the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. After serving in government with the Navy, the State Department, and the National Security Council, he taught at Harvard before assuming his present post in Virginia to direct the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, as well as the executive director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Zelikow's books include The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice), and the rewritten Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison). Zelikow has also been the director of the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy program of the Aspen Institute. He served as Counselor to the US Department of State from February 2005 to December 2006. As counselor, he was a senior policy advisor on a wide range of issues to the Secretary of State. Formerly a trial and appellate attorney in Houston, Zelikow served as a career foreign service officer overseas and on detail to the NSC staff. Following this career, he taught at Harvard University and at the University of Virginia. From 1998-2005 Zelikow was the director of the University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. A former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2003), Zelikow also directed the privately sponsored Carter-Ford Commission on Federal Election Reform, which led to the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Zelikow received a B.A. from the University of Redlands, a J.D. from the University of Houston, and his Ph.D. in international law and diplomacy from Tufts University's Fletcher School.