Ray Burghardt
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
4:30 p.m., in the Sanford Room of the Warren Hunting Smith Library
Ray Burghardt, Former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam
"Vietnam and the U.S.: 30 Years After the War, 10 Years After Normalization"
The President's Forum Series will host former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ray Burghardt, who will offer an address titled "Vietnam and the U.S.: 30 Years After the War, 10 Years After Normalization." Burghardt's talk will also culminate a series of events highlighting Vietnam on campus.
Previous to his nomination by President George W. Bush as Ambassador to Vietnam, Burghardt had already assembled a strong history in the Foreign Service. He began his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia before working in Vietnam for the Agency for International Development in 1970. Through the next three decades he worked in various positions in connection with Vietnam and Latin America, such as serving at the American Embassy in Saigon, Guatemala and Honduras. His résumé also contains the positions of Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia Affairs, and Senior Director of Latin American Affairs.
Most recently Burghardt has been named director of East-West Seminars at the East-West Center—a non-profit education and research organization—a position he assumed in January 2005.
The ambassador received his bachelor's degree from Columbia College in New York and did graduate studies at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He speaks Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
Burghardt's diverse and interesting career will provide the background for his talk on international politics between Vietnam and the United States and provide a springboard for discussions on international graduate study, volunteer opportunities available, and career options hosted by the Center for Global Education and Career Services at HWS.
This information is accurate for the time period that this person(s) spoke at Hobart and William Smith.