Nicholas Burns Keynote Speaker

Nicholas Burns returned to Harvard in spring 2025 as the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He will become Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project and a faculty member at Harvard’s Fairbank Center on China.

Ambassador Burns will also be Co-Chair of the Aspen Strategy Group/Aspen Security Forum and Vice Chairperson of the Cohen Group. He is a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary lifetime member of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Burns served for over three decades in the United States government. Most recently (2021–2025), he was U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, where he led a team from forty-eight U.S. government agencies at the U.S. Mission to China, including the embassy in Beijing and the American Consulate Generals in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Shenyang. During his three-year tenure in China, he helped stabilize relations with China while also competing with the Chinese government across the full range of military, security, economic, technology, trade, commercial, consular, and human rights issues.

Prior to his service in China, Burns was a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for thirteen years, from 2008 until his confirmation as Ambassador to China in 2021. During this period, he also served as a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board of Secretary of State John Kerry from 2014–2017.

He has had a long career in American diplomacy, serving six Presidents and nine Secretaries of State from both parties.

While serving as a career Foreign Service Officer, he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2005–2008), where he led negotiations on the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Deal, a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel, and Iran’s nuclear program.

As Ambassador to NATO (2001–2005), he led U.S. efforts in Brussels on 9/11, when the Alliance invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in defense of the United States for the first time in its history. He led the combined State and Defense Department U.S. Mission when NATO expanded with seven new members from Eastern Europe and when NATO embarked on military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was Ambassador to Greece (1997–2001) and State Department Spokesperson (1995–1997). He worked for five years (1990–1995) on the National Security Council at the White House, where he served as Senior Director and Special Assistant to President Clinton for Russia and Ukraine Affairs and as Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H. W. Bush.

Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem (1985–1987), where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank, and before that, at the American Embassies in Egypt (1983–1985) and Mauritania (1980). He began his government career as an intern at the Commerce and State Departments in Washington, D.C., during the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Ambassador Burns has received 15 honorary degrees, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Aspen Strategy Group’s Leadership Award, Boston College’s Ignatian and Alumni Achievement Awards, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from Johns Hopkins University, the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University, and many other honors.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Boston College (1978), a Master of Arts in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980), and earned a Certificat Pratique de Langue Française at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1977).