Morton H. Halperin is a Senior Advisor to the Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Policy Center.
Dr. Halperin served in the federal government in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations. From December 1998 to January 2001 he was Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. From February 1994 to March 1996, he was a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council. In 1993, he was a consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and was nominated by President Clinton for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. In 1969, he was a Senior Staff member of the National Security Council staff with responsibility for National Security Planning. From July 1966 to January 1969, he worked in the Department of Defense where he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), responsible for political-military planning and arms control. He is a member of the Board of Millennium Challenge Corporation having been nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate.
Dr. Halperin has also been associated with a number of think tanks. He was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress from June 2003 to December 2009 and was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from January 2001 to June 2003 and from March 1996 to December 1998. From July 1997 through December 1998, he was Senior Vice President of The Century Foundation/Twentieth Century Fund. From November 1992 to February 1994, Dr. Halperin was a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1974, he directed a project on government secrecy for the Twentieth Century Fund. From September 1969 to December 1973, he was a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Halperin worked for many years for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He served as Director of the Center for National Security Studies from 1975 to 1992, focusing on issues affecting both civil liberties and national security, such as the proper role of intelligence agencies and government secrecy. From 1984 to 1992, he was also the Director of the Washington Office of the ACLU, with responsibility for the ACLU’s national legislative program as well as the activities of the ACLU Foundation based in the Washington Office.
From 1960 to 1966, Dr. Halperin was associated with Harvard University where he was an Assistant Professor of Government and a Research Associate of the Center for International Affairs. Dr. Halperin has taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Columbia, Harvard, MIT, George Washington, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. He has taught courses on bureaucratic politics and foreign policy, human rights policy, arms control, and Congress and foreign policy.
Dr. Halperin has authored, coauthored and edited 25 books including Strategy and Arms Control (1961), Nuclear Fallacy (1987), Self-Determination in the New World Order (1992), Democracy Advantage (2004), Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, Second Edition (2006) The Survival and the Success of Liberty: A Democracy Agenda for U.S. Foreign Policy (2009), and The Democracy Advantage, Revised Edition (2009). He has also contributed articles to a number of newspapers, magazines, and journals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Harpers, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, on subjects including national security and civil liberties, bureaucratic politics, Japan, China, military strategy, and arms control. Dr. Halperin has testified more than 100 times before Congressional Committees
Dr. Halperin was a MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1985 to 1990 and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, the Wilbur Cross Medal awarded by the Yale Graduate Alumni Association, the John Jay Award given by Columbia College, and the Public Service Award of the Federation of American Scientists. He is on the boards of J Street and ONE.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, Dr. Halperin received a BA from Columbia College in 1958 and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Yale University in 1961. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Civil Liberties Union.
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