Jack F. Matlock, Jr., former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, will join the Hamilton College faculty this spring as the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Affairs.
The Linowitz Visiting Professorship was established in 1986. It is named in honor of Sol Linowitz, a 1935 Hamilton graduate who served as ambassador to the Organization of American States, chairman of the board of Xerox and co-negotiator of the Panama Canal treaties. He was President Jimmy Carter's representative in the Middle East negotiations from 1979 to 1981. The holder of the Linowitz chair teaches an upper-level seminar while at Hamilton.
Jack Matlock spent 35 years in the American Foreign Service (1956-1991). He served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for European and Soviet Affairs on the National Security Council Staff from 1983 to 1986, and ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983. Matlock's other foreign service assignments were in Vienna, Munich, Accra, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, in addition to tours in Washington as director of Soviet Affairs in the State Department and as deputy director of the Foreign Service Institute.
Matlock has held academic posts since his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1991, including visiting professor and lecturer at Princeton University, 2001-2004; George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1996 to July 2001; and Senior Research Fellow and Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor in the Practice of International Diplomacy at Columbia University, 1991 to 1996. He is the author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (Random House, 2004); Autopsy on the Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Random House, 1995); and a handbook to the 13-volume Russian edition of Stalin's Collected Works (Washington, D.C. 1955, 2nd edition, New York, 1971).
Matlock holds degrees from Duke University (AB, summa cum laude, 1950) and Columbia University (MA and Certificate of the Russian Institute, 1952). He has been awarded honorary doctorates by four institutions. Before entering the Foreign Service Matlock was istructor in Russian Language and Literature at Dartmouth College (1953-56).
-- by Laura Trubiano '07
