Leslie Gelb

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Leslie (Les) Howard Gelb (born March 4, 1937) is a former correspondent for The New York Times and is currently President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica that was re-established in 2005 after a 10-year hiatus.

Gelb attended New Rochelle High School, in New Rochelle, New York, graduating in 1955. He received a B.A. from Tufts University in 1959, and an M.A. in 1961 and Ph.D. in 1964 from Harvard University. From 1964-1967 he was Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. ^[1] He married his wife, Judith Cohen, on 2 August 1959 and lives in New York City. A father of three children, he received the Father of the Year Award in 1993.

Gelb was director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1969, winning the Pentagon's highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. He was an Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1979, serving as director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and winning the Distinguished Honor Award, the highest award of the US State Department.

He was diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times from 1973 to 1977; later, between 1981 and 1993, he was in turn national security correspondent, deputy editorial page editor, editor of the Op-Ed Page, and columnist. He was a leading member of the Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1986 for a six-part comprehensive series on the Strategic Defense Initiative (known as "Star Wars").

Gelb became President of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1993 and is now President Emeritus.

[edit] Published works

The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (1980)
Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (1984, co-author with I. M. Destler and Anthony Lake)
Anglo-American Relations, 1945-1950: Toward a Theory of Alliances(1988)