About

Abraham Lowenthal is known as a consummate institution builder as well as a distinguished scholar of international affairs and democratic governance. Most recently, with Chilean policymaker Sergio Bitar, he coedited Transition to Democracy: Conversations with World Leaders (Johns Hopkins University Press and International IDEA, 2015). Lowenthal was the founding director of the Inter-American Dialogue and the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the founding president of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

A longtime friend and advisor to the Kellogg Institute, Lowenthal helped organize the Wilson Center’s landmark project on transitions from authoritarian rule, leading to the classic volume coedited by Kellogg founding academic director Guillermo O’Donnell (1986). He is the author or editor of seventeen books and numerous articles.

Lowenthal has served on the boards of the Inter-American Dialogue, the Fulbright Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the American Political Science Association, among others, and as director of studies and vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations. A member of the Research Council of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment of Democracy, he has received numerous accolades, including decorations by the governments of Brazil and the Dominican Republic. He holds an MPA and PhD from Harvard University as well as an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame.