Bio
William (Bill) Burke-White is a CIGI senior fellow, an international lawyer and a political scientist. He is a leading expert on US foreign policy, multilateral institutions and international law. He researches and writes on the relationships between law and politics in international affairs and has expertise on the design and implementation of complex global governance solutions that involve multiple countries, international institutions and multilateral legal regimes. He has significant regional expertise on Russia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
From 2014 to 2019, Bill served as the inaugural director of Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania’s interdisciplinary international affairs institute. Building Perry World House from the ground up, Bill established a cutting-edge policy think tank embedded within Penn’s academic community and recruited staff, faculty and visiting policy fellows from across the globe. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the deputy dean of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
From 2009 to 2011, Bill served in the Obama administration on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, where he was principal drafter of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, Secretary Clinton’s hallmark initiative to reform the Department of State and reshape US foreign policy. While at the State Department, Bill was also responsible for issues related to US engagement with international institutions, including the G20, the G8 (now the G7) and the United Nations, as well as US policy toward the Russian Federation.
He holds both a bachelor’s and law degree from Harvard University, and a doctorate in international relations from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He has served as visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard Law School, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and Mofid University in Iran.