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Robert William Dry
Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs
rd2556@columbia.edu
Biography:
Professor Dry teaches U.S. Middle East policy and diplomacy studies at New York University. A recently retired Foreign Service Officer, overseas assignments included Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and France. As long term ‘chargé d’affaires’ or acting ambassador and deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Muscat from 2001 to 2004, he obtained unfettered access to Omani military facilities for U.S. forces to stage ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, the war in Afghanistan. From 2008 until his retirement, the Department detailed Professor Dry to The City College of New York as diplomat-in-residence for the greater New York region where he taught courses in U.S. foreign policy and global environmental governance and recruited for the Foreign Service.
Professor Dry’s expertise includes energy and development economics and international environment, science and technology. In addition to participating in a range of climate-related negotiations, he represented the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on closed fuel cycle and advanced nuclear systems talks and negotiated a U.S.-France arrangement to enhance protection for civilian nuclear facilities and transportation of nuclear materials. Professor Dry served as a negotiator for the multibillion dollar, massive-scale international thermonuclear fusion project (‘ITER’) under construction. He participated as a part of the U.S. delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report on the ‘Physical Science Basis (for Climate Change)’ in January 2007. Earlier, Professor Dry worked on reconciliation in Yemen and the final normalization process between the United States and Vietnam.
A JD graduate of George Washington University, Mr. Dry is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia. He earned a MA degree from the University of Glasgow in Scotland in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He is married and his two wonderful daughters attend the University of Miami and Wheaton College.