Stuart E. Eizenstat Keynote Speaker

Ambassador (ret) Stuart E. Eizenstat is Senior Counsel in Covington & Burling LLP’s international practice. His work at Covington focuses on resolving international trade problems and business disputes with the U.S. and foreign governments, and international business transactions and regulations on behalf of U.S. companies and others around the world. He was an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (1982-1991), where he taught a course on presidential decision-making. He has been a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution (1981) and the Woodrow Wilson Center (2001). He will be a Lecturer at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) beginning in 2026.

During a decade and a half of public service in six U.S. administrations, Ambassador Eizenstat has held a number of key senior positions, including Chief White House Domestic Policy Adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001); and senior official in charge of Holocaust justice issues in the Clinton, Obama, both Trump administrations, and Biden administration.

In the Carter White House, he was major figure in all the domestic legislative achievements of the Carter Administration. He delivered the eulogy for President Carter at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (2024). He also recommended to President Carter a Presidential Commission on the Holocaust, headed by Elie Wiesel, which led directly to the congressional approval of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which he now chairs since 2022, nominated by President Biden.

During the Clinton Administration, he had a prominent role in the development of key international initiatives, including the negotiations of the Transatlantic Agenda with the European Union (establishing the modern framework for the U.S. relationship with the EU); the development of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) among European and US CEOs; the negotiation of agreements with the European Union regarding the Helms-Burton Act and the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act; the negotiation of the Japan Port Agreement with the Japanese government; and the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, where he led the U.S. delegation.

Much of the interest in providing belated justice for victims of the Holocaust and other victims of Nazi tyranny during World War II was the result of his leadership of the Clinton Administration as Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues, while continuing to hold his four other Senate-confirmed positions. He successfully negotiated major agreements with the Swiss, Germans, Austrian and French, and other European countries, covering restitution of property, payment for slave and forced laborers, recovery of looted art, bank accounts, and payment of insurance policies, and with the French government for deportation of Jews during World War II. He was the principal negotiator of the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art with 44 countries, which continues to be a basis for recovery and compensation for Nazi-looted art. His book on these events, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, has been favorably received in publications like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Business Week, and Publisher’s Weekly. It has been translated into German, French, Czech and Hebrew.

In addition, during the Obama administration, he served as Special Adviser on Holocaust-Era Issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry (2009-2017). During this period of his public service, Ambassador Eizenstat negotiated significant Holocaust-related agreement with the governments of Lithuania (2011), and with France (2014), regarding the deportation of Jews on the French railway. During this time, he was also the principal U.S. negotiator for the Terezin Declaration with 47 countries (2009), which strengthened the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and urged measures to assist the social welfare of poor, elderly Holocaust survivors;  and the agreement with over 40 countries on Best Practices and Guidelines for the Restitution and/or Compensation of Private (Immovable) Property Confiscated by the Nazis and their Collaborators Between 1933-1945.

In the Obama Administration, he also served on the Defense Policy Board, for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

During the Trump administration, he was appointed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as Expert Adviser to the State Department on Holocaust-Era Issues (2008-2021).

In the Biden administration, he served  as Special Adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Holocaust Issues. In this capacity, he played a major role in the negotiation of the Best Practices for the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (2024), now supported by 34 countries. He was appointed by President Biden as Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council (2022-present).

Since 2009, he has served as pro bono Special Negotiator for the Jewish Claims Conference in negotiations with the German government, obtaining billions of dollars of benefits for poor Holocaust survivors, for home care, social and medical services, enhanced pensions, hardship payments, child survivor and Kindertransport survivors, special supplemental payments for the poorest of the poor, and worldwide educational benefits.

Ambassador Eizenstat has received more than eighty awards, including eight honorary doctorate degrees from universities and academic institutions. He has been awarded high civilian awards from the governments of France (two Legions of Honor awards in 2004 and 2024), Germany, Austria, Israel, Belgium and Lithuania, as well as from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the Alexander Hamilton Award from Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. In 2003, he received the Great Negotiator Award from Harvard Law School. In 2007, he was named “The Leading Lawyer in International Trade” in Washington, DC by Legal Times. His articles appear in The New York Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Foreign Policy magazine, and Foreign Affairs magazine, on a variety of international and domestic topics. He was the co-author of Andrew Young: The Path to History (1973), which chronicled how Andrew Young became for the first African American to win a congressional seat in the Deep South since Reconstruction following the Civil War.

His book President Carter: The White House Years (2018, 2020) is a definitive history of the Carter administration;  began the historical process of taking a more favorable view of the Carter administration; and which has been favorably reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, National Interest, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Moment Magazine, and many other publications. His most recent book is The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed the World (2024), which has also won accolades from a variety of publications.

Ambassador Eizenstat grew up in Atlanta and was educated in its public schools. He was All-City and Honorable Mention All-American (Dell Sports Magazine) in basketball. He is a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was inducted into the Order of the Old Well and Golden Fleece Society, and has an endowed chair in his name, The Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Chair of Modern Jewish History. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He was married for 45 years to the late Frances Eizenstat and has two sons, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandsons.