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August/September 2004
Vol. X, No. 3
Joseph Klaits |
Klaits Retiring
Joseph Klaits is retiring from the Institute after more than 12 years in the Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program, 10 of them as the program's director. Klaits arrived at the Institute after a career in academia and government service, including stints at Catholic University, teaching European history, and the U.S. Information Agency as an officer in the Fulbright exchange program. "The Institute has changed greatly since I arrived," Klaits noted. "It's a much better developed and more mature organization, with a clearer sense of our mission and a confidence that we have earned a permanent position in Washington."
Klaits is proud of the role the Fellowship Program has played in helping, as he put it, to develop the Institute's "weapons of mass instruction" in policy analysis, education, and scholarship. More than 200 scholars and practitioners have been resident senior fellows at the Institute. Their fellowships have resulted in more than 60 books, most published by the Institute's Press, and scores of Institute Peaceworks and Special Reports. Many of the fellows have gone on to very senior careers in academia and diplomacy. Books by fellows have had a lasting impact on policy and continue to be actively used in the State Department and in university curriculums.
"But it's not just scholars who have produced important work as fellows," said Klaits. "We've made a place for practitioners and diplomats such as Mohamed Sahnoun, who led the UN mission to Somalia before the ill-fated U.S. intervention there; Susan Collin Marks, a South African activist who wrote one of the first chronicles of South Africa's transition to democracy; and longtime Foreign Service officer Robert Perito, whose recent book Where Is the Lone Ranger When We Really Need Him? is making a real-time impact on policy discussions about U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan."
As for the future, Klaits says he plans to move to North Carolina to be near his children and grandchildren, and to return to some of the academic projects that were his earlier interest. "I'm looking forward to a less structured lifestyle," he said.
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