Kofi Annan kicks off Global Fellows program

WEB EXCLUSIVE 5:00 p.m. Former United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kofi Annan will come to Columbiato connect with budding diplomats and politicians and work on broader initiatives, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an e-mail Thursday. While Annan has spoken on campus and worked directly with professors here, this will be his first official appointment at Columbia.

Annan is slated to serve alongside other world leaders in the Global Fellows program, chool of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth will kick off next year. This program aims to provide world leaders a stable position at Columbia so that they can personally impart their knowledge to graduate students seeking to pursue professions in international service. Other inaugural Global Fellows include Tung Chee-hwa, who ran the government of Hong Kong as its first elected Chief Executive, and Alfred Gusenbauer, chancellor of Austria for two years and an eight-year leader of the country’s Social Democratic Party.

According to a University announcement, Global Fellows "will bring students together with global practitioners to provide firsthand knowledge of experiences in the life of an international or public figure." Global fellows will be "resources" for Columbia programs through lectures, seminars, and advising.

In assuming the post, Annan will return to familiar territory. In addition to having delivered speeches in 2005 and 2008 at conferences on campus, he addressed Morningside’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine on World AIDS Day in 2004. Director of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs directed the program overseeing the United Nations’ “Millennium Development Goals,” launched in 2001 when Annan had already presided four years over the international body. These goals, part of the Millennium Project, strive for an end to poverty and greater sustainability. Sachs, whose tenure there ended in 2006, continues to advise Annan’s successor Ban Ki-Moon.

At Columbia, Annan will help with the University's globalization intiatives. He will serve on the Committee on Global Thought, and facilitate events at Columbia's Global Centers in Beijing and Amman.

Annan’s “extraordinary contributions to the world are well known, and it will be a great addition to our community to have him with us,” Bollinger wrote in the email.

In his ten years as Secretary General, Ghanaian-born Annan initiated efforts to fight AIDS and advocated women’s rights in Arab countries. After his term, Annan was widely applauded for striking an agreement to form a coalition government in war-torn Kenya, co-run by two Kenyan politicians whose candidacies in the country’s 2007 presidential election resulted in widespread and deadly civil unrest. He is now chancellor of the University of Ghana and on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation.