WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Strobe Talbott, former Deputy Secretary of State and a foreign affairs author and journalist, was elected president of the Brookings Institution Thursday. He will assume to post Sept. 1.
Talbott, 55, was chosen to be the sixth president of Brookings, one of the nation's oldest public policy research institutions, by a unanimous vote of the Brookings board of trustees following an eight-month search.
Talbott is director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, which sponsors interdisciplinary research and teaching, as well as collaboration with other universities and non-governmental organizations.
"This is a great honor and opportunity," said Talbott. "Sound policy depends on nonpartisan, independent research and analysis of the kind that Brookings has generated for more than eight decades. I have long admired the Brookings Institution's reputation for excellence and objectivity, which is an invaluable asset for its ongoing mission. I look forward to working with a superb team of scholars in ensuring the preeminence and impact of the Institution in the years ahead."
Talbott will succeed Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, who announced last year that he would retire in 2002. Armacost has served as President of Brookings since 1995.
"Strobe is fortunate indeed to inherit from Mike Armacost an extremely healthy institution," said Brookings Chairman James A. Johnson. "Mike has guided Brookings to a new level of intellectual excellence and policy impact."
Talbott will lead a staff of 277, including some of the world's leading public policy scholars, and preside over an endowment of more than $200 million. This year, Brookings scholars will publish more than 50 volumes of research in the Institution's core areas of politics and government, international affairs, and economic studies.
Talbott served in the State Department from 1993 until 2001, for one year as Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, and then for seven years as Deputy Secretary of State. He entered government service after 21 years as an editor and correspondent for Time magazine.
He has written six books on U.S.-Soviet relations and nuclear arms control and also translated and edited two volumes of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs. Before entering government, Talbott also served as a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Trilateral Commission. Since leaving government, he has rejoined the Carnegie board and the Trilateral Commission.
