Ambassador Dennis Ross
William Davidson Distinguished Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Amb. Dennis Ross is counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Amb. Ross is also Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. For more than 12 years, Amb. Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process, dealing directly with the parties as the U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. Amb. Ross served two years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, and a year as special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Prior to Amb. Ross’s service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, he served as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. Amb. Ross played a prominent role in U.S. policy towards the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition. During the Reagan administration, Amb. Ross served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and deputy director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.
Amb. Ross is the author of five books on the peace process, the Middle East, and international relations, most recently Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny (PublicAffairs, 2019), written with his colleague David Makovsky, which was published in September 2019.
Amb. Ross earned his Ph.D. from UCLA, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making and served as executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford program on Soviet International Behavior. Amb. Ross received UCLA’s highest medal and has been named UCLA alumnus of the year.
