Thomas G. Weiss (born 1946) is a distinguished international diplomat and scholar of international relations and global governance with special expertise in the politics of the United Nations, where he himself served in various high-ranking roles. He was named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for a project exploring the concept of a world without the United Nations.[1] Since 1998, he has been Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and is Director Emeritus of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.[2] At present, he also is co-chair, Cultural Heritage at Risk Project, J. Paul Getty Trust; Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs; Global Eminence Scholar, Kyung Hee University, Seoul. In his spare time, he is a wood sculptor.[3]
He is "one of the leading experts on the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention,"[4] and is recognized as an authority on international organizations and the UN system.[5] Weiss adheres to the constructivist school, and advocates a position for intergovernmental organizations that goes beyond the anarchy of inter-state relations. He initiated the UN Intellectual History Project[6] in 1999 to trace the origins and the evolution of key ideas about international economic and social development nurtured under UN auspices.[7] Weiss conceived the "Third United Nations," and directed the research team that popularized the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). A firm believer in R2P, Weiss has argued in numerous works that a well-grounded interpretation of sovereignty does not preclude intervention in the face of mass atrocities. His oral history transcript is available on the UN Intellectual History Project website.[8]
Weiss received his BA from Harvard University and both his MA and PhD from Princeton University. He pursued advanced studies at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. He held professional posts in the Office of the UN Commissioner for Namibia, the University Program at the Institute for World Order, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and the International Labour Organization. He served as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva from 1975 until 1985.
After leaving UNCTAD, he became executive director of the International Peace Academy (now the International Peace Institute), until he left in 1989 to become research professor at Brown University and associate director of their Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He was also executive director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) from 1992 and 1998, and co-director of the Humanitarianism and War Project. From 2012 to 2015, he was a Visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London.
Weiss was director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies from 2001 to 2014. For over forty years he has regularly taught, lectured, consulted on, and conducted research on a wide variety of issues in international relations.[9]
He served as an advisory board member for the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect[10] from 2007 to 2014 and sits on the editorial boards of Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding,[11] Third World Quarterly,[12] Global Governance,[13] and Global Responsibility to Protect.[14] He is, along with Rorden Wilkinson, co-editor of Routledge's "Global Institutions Series." His prior positions include:
Weiss has authored or edited some 60 books and 275 articles and book chapters. His research interests focus primarily on the United Nations, global governance, humanitarianism, human rights, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, and the power of ideas in shaping world order. Weiss's books from the 21st century include (most recent editions are listed):
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