The Georgetown University Lecture Fund presents:
Iraq, Vietnam, and the Purposes of War: A Discussion with W. Anthony Lake
Thursday, 24 April, 2008
7:00PM - 8:00PM
205 Old North, Grand Reception Room

Anthony Lake is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Dr. Lake is currently a senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Barrack Obama's presidential campaign. From 1993 to 1997, Lake served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs under President Bill Clinton.

In 1962, Lake joined the Foreign Service, and was posted to Vietnam, where he became a special assistant to then-ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. Singled out early for his talent, Lake rose quickly to become an aide to Secretary of State Kissinger in 1969, accompanying the secretary on his first secret meeting with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris. In 1970, he had a falling out with Kissinger over the Nixon administration's extension of the war to Cambodia and later wrote a book critical of Kissinger's approach to Africa.

In 1977, Lake became head of the State Department's policy planning operation in the administration of Jimmy Carter. In that position, he reported directly to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and was witness to the bureaucratic maneuvering that went on between Vance and Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, Lake withdrew into academia, becoming a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts. In 1984, he moved to Mount Holyoke College, where he has taught courses in the Vietnam War, Third World revolutions, and American foreign policy. During the 1992 presidential campaign, he was one of candidate Clinton's chief foreign policy advisers. (Clinton and Lake had worked together in the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern.) Lake is also an old friend of Warren Christopher, Clinton's choice for secretary of state.

Lake's published works include "The 'Tar Baby' Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia," (1976); "Third World Radical Regimes: U.S. Policy Under Carter and Reagan," (1985); and "Somoza Falling: A Case Study of Washington at Work," (1990). In addition, he helped found the influential journal "Foreign Policy."

Lake has been referred to in the press as a "creative and imaginative thinker." He is known as a skillful bureaucratic conciliator and is thought to favor a strong United Nations as a multilateral vehicle for solving international problems.

In addition to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, Dr. Lake's board and advisory memberships include the Marshall Legacy Institute, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Center for the Study of Democracy at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Center for International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Center for International Relations at University of California/Los Angeles, and the America Abroad Media. He also serves on the Board of Trustees at St. Mary's College of Maryland."

Dr. Lake was born in New York City and attended Middlesex School and Harvard College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961. Lake studied international economics at Trinity College, Cambridge and later received a Ph.D from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1974.