Thursday, March 14, 2013
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theatre

 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Reserve tickets (free through Kroc IPJ)

Ambassador Rick Barton of Maine is the Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations and the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. Prior to this position, Mr. Barton served as senior advisor to the Secretary of State on Conflict and Stabilization.

The new bureau is responsible for driving the State Department’s efforts to improve U.S. government effectiveness in preventing conflict and addressing crises. Mr. Barton leads a team of nearly 200, who are focused on a few countries of special importance or where innovative initiatives can further locally driven solutions.

From 2009 to 2011 Ambassador Barton served in New York as the U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC), working on development, peacebuilding, climate change and human rights. During that time, Mr. Barton was actively engaged in the creation of UN Women, the advancement of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the Millennium Development Goals summit, the suspension of Libya’s voting rights on the UN Human Rights Commission, Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction, Democracy Fund initiatives and efforts to better align U.S. and UN development country programs.

Mr. Barton has worked to improve the U.S. and international response to conflict in more than 30 of the world’s most unstable places. He led independent reviews of Iraq reconstruction; developed civilian strategies for Iraq, Sudan and Sri Lanka; created new measurements of progress in Iraq and Afghanistan; and initiated path-breaking approaches to conflict reduction in Pakistan and Nigeria.

The leadership positions he held in this field include co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Deputy High Commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland, and founding director of the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives. Mr. Barton taught for five years at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he was the Frederick Schultz Professor.

Mr. Barton served on the Smart Power Commission, as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group, led conflict-related working groups at the United States Institute of Peace and for the Princeton Project on National Security.

Ambassador Barton graduated from Harvard College in 1971, earned his master's in business administration from Boston University, and was honored with a doctorate by Wheaton College of Massachusetts. As the children of American diplomats, Mr. Barton and his brothers lived in Argentina, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Mexico. Married since 1975, Mr. Barton and Kit Lunney have an adult daughter, Kacy, and live in Washington, D.C.

Co-sponsored by;

Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice and Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies
USD Department of Political Science and International Relations

Supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace Public Education for Peacebuilding Support Initiative. 

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace or the Harvard Club of San Diego.

Reserve tickets (free through Kroc IPJ)