Keren Yarhi-Milo’s Career Path in Foreign Policy
“`html
Keren Yarhi-Milo’s childhood dream of becoming a UN ambassador shaped her early fascination with foreign policy. After leaving her native Israel to attend college at Columbia University in New York, Yarhi-milo embarked on an academic career that took her to the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and back to columbia. In 2022, she became dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)-the youngest dean in SIPA’s history. she is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Read more about her fascination with foreign policy “puzzles,” her efforts to take academia beyond the ivory tower, and how she ended up teaching a class with Hillary Clinton.
Here’s how Keren Yarhi-milo got her career in foreign policy.
More on:
We always start with the same question: What did you want to be when you were little?
I wanted to be an ambassador to the United Nations. I grew up in Israel and was always interested in international relations-what was happening in the region, the peace process when I was a teenager, the role of diplomacy in ending conflicts.
When Madeleine Albright became the first woman ambassador to the United Nations, I was fascinated by her and her life story. becuase she went to school at Columbia University, it became my dream to go to Columbia one day and work at the United Nations. I started reading diaries of former ambassadors to the United Nations and was very much taken by the idea of an organization trying to solve conflicts, work on peace, and end wars.
So how did you end up deciding on academia? I was wondering if you had ever considered something like the United Nations.
By accident. in Israel, you have to do mandatory military service, and because I was fluent in Arabic, I was drafted into intelligence and worked on the peace process-
More on:
Here you mean the Oslo Accords?
<
not just in Israel but also here-the people around the table at important convenings or the key decision-makers don’t have enough variety of viewpoints, backgrounds, identities, lived experiences, and political views. The idea was to create a pipeline of people who bring all of that,mentor them early on,and give them opportunities so that we have qualified,good people taking leadership roles.
For me as a woman in the very male-dominated field of international security, I saw and lived through this. There’s a lot of chauvinism in Israeli intelligence-we saw this even before October 7 in the post-mortems on the intelligence failure. But it’s not just about gender or race.You really need people with different perspectives and lived experiences to have the kinds of conversations that produce the best policy solutions and creative ideas. We’re not seeing enough of it. As director of SIPA’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, I thought this was something intentional I could do starting from the undergraduate level.
I have another question about your time at SIPA. You became the youngest dean in SIPA’s history in 2022. What did that mean to you?
The greatest honor. As a first-generation student, Columbia changed my life. Coming back to be dean of the leading, largest and most global, policy school in the world was tremendous.
I took this job at a pivotal time-the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the return of great power competition, technology disrupting how we live, democracies backsliding, inequality, climate issues. It was a moment of disruption and uncertainty when public policy schools needed to be the connector between academia and policymakers, translating research into creative, evidence-based solutions.
Being the dean of SIPA at that moment, I thought public policy schools should really step up and meet this moment. I had the opportunity to create the institute of Global Politics (IGP) and reorganize SIPA not around disciplines but around the global policy challenges we want to solve-creating a pipeline of people working on those challenges, providing policy-relevant scholarship, and engaging with the community beyond Columbia’s gates.
Then October 7 came, revealing even more challenges. We’re not very good at talking with people we disagree with in a civil way. I observed this before october 7, which is partly why we created IGP, but after, it became very clear.From there came a commitment not just to academic pluralism, but to teaching how to engage in civil discourse and create forums for debates-all in service of sharpening our understanding and problem-solving.
it’s an astonishing honor to be dean of SIPA.I love the school and have amazing students and faculty.
That makes sense. I’m curious-you founded the Emerging Voices program, you founded IGP.I was really struck by your seeming desire to launch these new initiatives and innovate beyond the ivory tower. How much of that is part of your thinking?
I’m very much an academic and a product of American academia in terms of pedigree. I believe in American universities-they’re the envy of the world, where a lot of the best work is done, and they play such a big role in society. But I’m also passionate about the long-term health and survival of these institutions, especially in the Ivy League.We should always stay connected to society and the world outside our gates because it’s very easy to be in an ivory tower. An ivory tower protects you from political pressures, but it also leads people to question: Are you relevant? What are you doing? How are you helping society?
We need to be intentional about how we engage. The idea of bringing academics and practitioners together, having academics interact with policymakers, the business sector, nongovernmental organizations-it’s very critically important. We need to be out there explaining what we’re doing and why in a compelling way, so people understand why universities like ours exist and why they’re important. But
Analysis of Provided Text & Research Plan
The provided text is an interview excerpt, likely from a career advice or profile series. It features a dean discussing their career path and offering advice to those starting out. Key entities include:
* The Interviewee: A dean (name not explicitly stated in the excerpt).
* Bob jervis: A mentor to the interviewee.
* Keri Russell: Actress known for the show The Diplomat.
* Columbia University: The interviewee’s institution.
* Council on Foreign Relations: The organization publishing/hosting the interview.
* The Diplomat: A television show.
Research Plan:
Given the source is untrusted, a thorough verification process is required. The focus will be on confirming the interviewee’s identity, verifying Bob Jervis’s association, and checking the details surrounding the The Diplomat engagement. The date of the interview is not provided, so the research will focus on verifying information as of the provided timestamp (2026-01-14 15:31:00) and up to the current time (2024-01-15 16:13:57).
Phase 1: Adversarial Research & Freshness Check
- Identify the Interviewee: Search for interviews with deans at prominent institutions (focusing on those affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations) that match the general career trajectory described in the text (scholarship to management, etc.). Keywords: “dean interview,” “Council on Foreign Relations,” “foreign policy,” “academic administration.”
- Verify Bob Jervis’s Association: Bob Jervis is a well-known political scientist. Confirm if any current deans have publicly acknowledged him as a mentor. Search academic publications and biographical information for connections.
- Confirm the Diplomat Engagement: Search news articles, industry publications (e.g., Variety, The Hollywood Reporter), and Columbia University news releases for reports of a dean consulting on The Diplomat.Look for mentions of keri Russell’s involvement in any related events at Columbia.
- Council on Foreign relations Publication: Check the Council on Foreign relations website for published interviews matching the described content.
- Breaking News Check: As of 2024-01-15 16:13:57, there are no major breaking news events directly related to the entities mentioned. However, ongoing geopolitical events could influence the relevance of the interviewee’s expertise.
Phase 2: Entity-Based GEO (Generative Engineering Output – To be completed after Phase 1)
This phase will involve structuring the verified information into a concise and accurate summary. It will not involve rewriting or paraphrasing the original text. Rather, it will present the facts independently gathered. The output will include:
* Confirmed Identity of interviewee: (If possible)
* Verified Mentorship: Confirmation of the Bob Jervis mentorship.
* Details of The Diplomat Engagement: Specifics of the consultation, if confirmed.
* Source Links: Links to authoritative sources used for verification.
* Status of Information: A statement indicating the latest verified status of the information (e.g., “Confirmed as of 2024-01-15”).
Critically important Note: If the interviewee’s identity cannot be definitively confirmed,the output will state that. The goal is to provide a factually accurate account based on independent verification, not to reproduce or validate the original, untrusted source.