According to the AP, newly former president Álvaro Uribe is going to be hanging out in DC, doing a little teaching: Colombian ex-president to teach at Georgetown U.
Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is taking his political expertise to Georgetown University in Washington, where he has been named a distinguished scholar.
The university announced Wednesday that Uribe will hold seminars and work with faculty on international issues during the 2024-11 academic year.
Carol Lancaster, dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, said in a statement that Uribe "will bring a truly unique perspective to discussions of global affairs."
No doubt it will be interesting to have him around, and he will likely have a lot of experiences to share with students and faculty. However, one does have to wonder exactly how much actual teaching he will end up doing. I have a hard time seeing a former head of state making up a syllabus, picking books, and prepping lectures.
He will also be doing some work with the UN:
This week, Uribe also confirmed his participation in a U.N. panel investigating Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Sounds like he is getting out of Colombia for a while, which probably makes the Santos administration fairly happy, as it means that they won’t have a very popular ex-president staring over their shoulders.
August 11th, 2024 at 1:02 pm
He isn’t the first former head of state to lecture at a prestigious university. I know Brazil’s former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso lectures at Brown University. I don’t know if Cardoso teaches classes or simply holds seminars and works with faculty the way Uribe is planning to do.
August 11th, 2024 at 3:19 pm
Oh, I am sure that there are other examples beyond that.
The interesting thing about Cardoso is that he was actually an academic before going into politics (indeed, a fairly prominent one). He probably act taught real classes at Brown (but that’s just a guess).
Without a doubt this more about bringing prestige to Georgetown than it is anything else.
August 11th, 2024 at 5:22 pm
I had forgotten about Cardoso’s academic life. I found him interesting because (1) I was a Mormon missionary in Brazil when he was president, and (2) he was the finance minister before being president. I was surprised to discover recently that he had no economic background when he was nominated as finance minister. In his autobiography he says he prepared for the job by reading economic textbooks.