Philip T. Reeker, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs and former U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, will visit UNC-Chapel Hill on Tuesday, Jan. 29. He will deliver a lecture on “The Balkans: from War and ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ to Democratization and Integration into Europe” at 5:30 p.m. in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium in the FedEx Global Education Center.
Ambassador Reeker’s lecture will address the complex history and politics of this volatile region from the Bosnian war in the early 1990s to promising developments of the present.
A career foreign service officer, Ambassador Reeker assumed his current position in August 2011. He supervises the Office of South-Central European Affairs and is responsible for U.S. relations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Prior to assuming his current position, Reeker served as U.S. ambassador in Macedonia. He has also served as the counselor to the ambassador for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and was the deputy chief of mission in Budapest, Hungary. In 2003, he received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy and traveled domestically and internationally as the “Spokesman at Large” for the State Department, giving interviews on U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy.
His visit to UNC is in conjunction with the Ambassadors Forum organized by the Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professorship, the Center for European Studies and the Department of History. In this forum, students engage with prominent diplomats, politicians and international leaders. Students have the opportunity to gain insights into practical application of their studies in history, political science, European studies and international relations.
Published January 25, 2013.