SIPA Faculty Will Welcome David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy

The noted foreign-policy scholar and writer David J. Rothkopf will join SIPA’s faculty as a visiting professor of international and public affairs for the 2016-17 academic year, the School announced today. Rothkopf will teach courses on the United States’ role in world affairs in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 and serve as visiting director of the International Fellows program over the same period, while program director Stephen Sestanovich is on leave.

Rothkopf is the CEO and editor of the FP Group, which publishes Foreign Policy magazine and its websites, and the president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, a Washington-based international consulting firm that specializes in areas including energy and trade.

“SIPA will be fortunate to once again welcome David Rothkopf to our faculty in the coming academic year,” said Dean Merit E. Janow. “He will bring to our students and our community a distinct perspective forged by his engagement in a cross-section of contemporary foreign-policy debates, both as a government official and through his work in the private sector, and I know our International Fellows will benefit greatly from his deep experience and connections in Washington and abroad.”

“I look forward to again teaching at SIPA,” said Rothkopf. “It will be a special privilege to work with the 2017 class of international fellows, and to welcome all students who wish to consider how United States conducts foreign policy in today’s complex world.”

He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear (PublicAffairs, 2014). Rothkopf writes a weekly column for foreignpolicy.com and contributes frequently to publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, CNN, Newsweek, and Time. Rothkopf is also the host of “The Editor’s Roundtable,” a weekly audio program and podcast on current events, and has appeared as a TED Talk speaker.

Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a current or former member of advisory boards of the Center for Global Development, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

He previously worked as CEO of Intellibridge Corporation and as managing director of Kissinger Associates, and served in the Clinton presidential administration as deputy under secretary of commerce for international trade and acting under secretary. During his tenure in the Department of Commerce, Rothkopf directed the activities of the International Trade Administration and helped create the Big Emerging Markets Initiative, the U.S. government’s first inter-agency program devoted to emerging markets.

The appointment marks a return to SIPA and Columbia for Rothkopf, who between Fall 1996 and Spring 2003 regularly taught SIPA courses on emerging markets, and returned for a semester in 2006 to lead a course on U.S. national security. He has also been a faculty member at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and lectured at many elite universities in the United States and abroad.

Rothkopf earned a BA from Columbia in 1977 and also studied at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.