Joining Princeton’s faculty in 2006 following a 29-year career in the U.S. diplomatic service, Daniel Kurtzer was named the S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle East Policy Studies. From 2001 to 2005, he served as the United States Ambassador to Israel and from 1997 to 2001 as the United States Ambassador to Egypt. Before that, he served as speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Middle East advisor on the policy planning staff, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. 

Throughout his career, Kurtzer was instrumental in formulating and executing U.S. policy toward the Middle East peace process. He served on Secretary of State James A. Baker’s Middle East peace team that brought about the 1991 Madrid peace conference, and chaired the multilateral peace talks that followed. Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Kurtzer to serve on the Secretary’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. In 2007, he was named the first commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League. 

Kurtzer is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, co-author of The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011; editor of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict; The Decline and Fall of America’s Israel-Palestine Diplomacy, 2009-2025 (forthcoming 2027);  and numerous scholarly articles and op-eds on foreign policy issues. 

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Political Science (Comparative Politics), Columbia University, 1976
Supervision: Professors J.C. Hurewitz, Charles Issawi, and Mark Kesselman
Dissertation: Palestine Guerrilla and Israeli Counterinsurgency Warfare: The Radicalization of the Palestine Arab Community to Violence, 1949-1970

Master of Philosophy in Comparative Politics, Columbia University, 1974
Certificate in Middle East Studies, School of International Affairs, Columbia University, 1974

M.A. in Comparative Politics (Middle East), Columbia University, 1973

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Yeshiva University, 1971