David M. Abshire

David M. Abshire is president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, D.C., and president of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation of New York. He is the vice chairman of the board of CSIS and was its cofounder in 1962 and served as its chief executive for many years. He cofounded with Kazuo Inamori the CSIS Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy in 2002. He recently served as one of the four coconvenors of the 2006 congressionally mandated Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. He graduated from Baylor Preparatory School in Chattanooga, where he is designated a distinguished graduate and served as a trustee for six years. Dr. Abshire is a graduate of West Point, where in 1996 he received the Distinguished Graduate Award. In the Korean War, he served as a platoon leader, company commander, a division intelligence officer, and was decorated with several honors. He subsequently served as an instructor at the Infantry School in Georgia. He received a Ph.D. with honors in history from Georgetown University, where for many years he served as an adjunct professor at its School of Foreign Service. In 2006, he received an honorary degree, doctor of humane letters, from the university. His full-time government service includes congressional staff (1958–1960), assistant secretary of state for congressional relations (1970–1973), head of the National Security Group under President Reagan (1980), U.S. ambassador to NATO (1983–1987), and special counsellor to President Ronald Reagan (1987). As ambassador to NATO, he was given the highest Defense Department civilian award—the Distinguished Public Service Medal. His part-time government service includes first chairman of the Board for International Broadcasting (1974–1977) and member of the Murphy Commission on the Organization of the Government (1974–1975), the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1981–1982), and the President’s Task Force on U.S. Governmental International Broadcasting (1991). He has also served on the Advisory Board of the Naval War College and on the Executive Panel of the Chief of Naval Operations. He is also the coconvenor and a founding member of the Trinity National Leadership Roundtable, in conjunction with Trinity Church Wall Street. In 2003, he served on the Advisory Group for Public Diplomacy mandated by Congress, and in 2005, he chaired a panel for the Homeland Security Advisory Board. Dr. Abshire is vice chairman of the Council of American Ambassadors and a trustee of the George C. Marshall Foundation. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the School of Public Service at St. Albans School, the Council on Competitiveness, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Fondation Paul-Henri Spaak in Brussels, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Alfalfa Club, Alibi Club, Cosmos Club, Metropolitan Club, and an honorary member of the University Club. Additionally, he was a cochair of the New York Opera Ball. He served for nine years on the board of Proctor & Gamble and was the first chairman of its Public Policy Committee, as well as serving on the Board of Directors of the Ogden Corporation and on the Advisory Board of BP America. He has been decorated by seven heads of government and received three honorary degrees. He is the author of seven books, as well as being a contributing editor and a primary author of several other works, including Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership (Praeger, 2001), and he is a founding editor of The Washington Quarterly. The most recent of his seven books is Call to Greatness: Challenging Our Next President, 2008 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).