Patrick Mendis

Patrick Mendis (born 1960) is an educator, diplomat, author, and executive in government service in the United States. A former American diplomat and military professor during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, he held various positions in the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, and State. He was appointed twice as a commissioner of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO at the State Department by the Obama administration. His appointment to the UNESCO Commission ended during the Trump administration when the White House withdrew from the UN agency.

A Taiwan fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (ROC), Dr. Mendis served as a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University and a senior fellow of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in Taipei. Previously, he was a distinguished visiting professor of Sino-American relations at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He is currently a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

After serving as a Rajawali senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a visiting professor of Peking University's School of International Studies, Mendis served as a distinguished visiting professor of Asian-Pacific affairs at Shandong University in China as well as an associate-in-research of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

Mendis served as a distinguished senior fellow and affiliate professor of public and international affairs in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. Dr. Mendis is an adjunct professor of geography and geoinformation science at GMU.

Mendis taught MBA/MPA as well as international trade and American foreign policy courses at the University of Minnesota, University of Maryland, and Yale University before joining the U.S. Department of State, where he served under Secretary Madeleine Albright and General Colin Powell. In 2012, Secretary Hillary Clinton appointed Professor Mendis as a commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and reappointed by Secretary John Kerry. He has worked in, and traveled to, more than 130 countries, visited all 50 states in the United States, and visited all provinces of China.

Earlier in his life, Mendis worked at the Minnesota House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and the United Nations. After his government service (in the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy and State), Mendis returned to academia where he served as the vice president of the Osgood Center for International Studies and as a foreign policy visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C.

He is an alumnus of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Mendis was elected to serve on the board of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Alumni DC Council in Washington (2010-2014) and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the ''Harvard International Review.'' He has established the Edward Burdick Legislative Award at the Humphrey School and the Millennials Award for Leadership and Service at Harvard University.

Dr. Mendis has authored more than 100 journal articles, government reports, newspaper columns, and several books, including most recently, ''Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order'' (2013), ''Commercial Providence: The Secret Destiny of the American Empire'' (2010), and ''TRADE for PEACE: How the DNA of America, Freemasonry, and Providence Created a New World Order with Nobody in Charge'' (2009). Provided by Wikipedia