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Brazil Institute Board Member Honored for Defense Education Work

The Brazil Institute is pleased to announce that Ambassador Luigi R. Einaudi, a member of our Advisory Board and former U.S. envoy to the Organization of American States, received the William Perry Award for Excellence in Defense and Security Education on January 12, 2017, an honor granted in recognition of Ambassador Einaudi’s dedication and excellence in educating the next generation of foreign policy and national security leaders.

Brazil Institute Board Member Honored for Defense Education Work

The Brazil Institute is pleased to announce that Ambassador Luigi R. Einaudi, a member of our Advisory Board and former U.S. envoy to the Organization of American States (OAS), was honored with the William Perry Award for Excellence in Defense and Security Education on January 12, 2017.  Undersecretary of State Thomas A. Shannon, Jr. presented the award on behalf of the National Defense University's Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in recognition of Ambassador Einaudi’s dedication and excellence in educating the next generation of foreign policy and national security leaders. The ceremony was attended by over 200 national security officials and diplomats, including the chief of Brazil’s Permanent Mission at the OAS, José Luiz Machado e Costa and Secretary General of the OAS Luis Almagro.

As Undersecretary Shannon noted, education has long been a fundamental aspect of Ambassador Einaudi’s approach to diplomacy:

Those who worked with him on the Ecuador-Peru talks remember his assigning readings designed to enhance their knowledge of the historical context of the negotiations.  And he would quiz his minions on the readings.  His Socratic method of instruction was soon dubbed “Luigi hazing” by his colleagues. To those of us, such as myself, who worked with him but at some remove – and in my case I worked with him both at State Department and at the OAS – his instruction was done through mentorship and involving us in his diplomatic practice.

Ambassador Einaudi devoted his distinguished career to the promotion of peace, diplomacy, and international cooperation. In his 23 years at the State Department, he served in numerous senior positions, including U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States and U.S. Special Envoy to the 1998 Ecuador-Peru peace talks. In 2000, he was elected Assistant Secretary General of the Organization of American States and later served as Acting Secretary General.

 The American diplomat was an early promoter and a key participant in the Ecuador-Peru peace talks, which were facilitated by the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile and involved diplomats and military personnel from all four nations. The effort led to the resolution of the last pending border dispute in South America, formalized in the Treaty of Brasilia signed in October 1998 in the Brazilian capital.

Ambassador Einaudi received numerous awards for his service, including from Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H. Bush, from Secretaries of State Kissinger and Albright, from the State and Defense Departments, as well as from the governments of Ecuador, Italy, Peru, and Spain. He has taught government courses at Harvard, Wesleyan, UCLA, and Georgetown, and led social science research on Latin America at RAND. A commitment to education and public service runs in the ambassador’s family. He is the namesake of his paternal grandfather, Luigi Einaudi (1874-1961), an economist, university professor and politician who was the first President of post-fascist Italy at the end of Second World War.  The ambassador’s father, the late Mario Einaudi, was an accomplished professor of Political Science at Cornell University.

Currently, Ambassador Einaudi is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and a trustee of the San Giacomo Charitable Foundation.  In addition to sitting on the Brazil Institute Advisory Council, Ambassador Einaudi is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Undersecretary Shannon’s remarks and Ambassador Einaudi’s acceptance speech are available below, as is Ambassador Einaudi’s 2011 piece on the need for strategic Brazil-U.S. engagement. For more information about the Perry Center at the National Defense University and award ceremony, click here.

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Luigi Einaudi

Luigi Einaudi

Advisory Council Member;
Trustee, Saint Giacomo Charitable Foundation
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Brazil Institute

The Brazil Institute—the only country-specific policy institution focused on Brazil in Washington—works to foster understanding of Brazil’s complex reality and to support more consequential relations between Brazilian and US institutions in all sectors. The Brazil Institute plays this role by producing independent research and programs that bridge the gap between scholarship and policy, and by serving as a crossroads for leading policymakers, scholars and private sector representatives who are committed to addressing Brazil’s challenges and opportunities.  Read more