Thomas G. Weiss

Thomas G. Weiss (born 1946) is a distinguished international diplomat and scholar of international relations and global governance with special expertise in the politics of the United Nations, where he himself served in various high-ranking roles. He was named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for a project exploring the concept of a world without the United Nations.^[1] Since 1998, he has been Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and is Director Emeritus of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.^[2] At present, he also is co-chair, Cultural Heritage at Risk Project, J. Paul Getty Trust; Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs; Global Eminence Scholar, Kyung Hee University, Seoul. In his spare time, he is a wood sculptor.^[3]

He is "one of the leading experts on the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention,"^[4] and is recognized as an authority on international organizations and the UN system.^[5] Weiss adheres to the constructivist school, and advocates a position for intergovernmental organizations that goes beyond the anarchy of inter-state relations. He initiated the UN Intellectual History Project^[6] in 1999 to trace the origins and the evolution of key ideas about international economic and social development nurtured under UN auspices.^[7] Weiss conceived the "Third United Nations," and directed the research team that popularized the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). A firm believer in R2P, Weiss has argued in numerous works that a well-grounded interpretation of sovereignty does not preclude intervention in the face of mass atrocities. His oral history transcript is available on the UN Intellectual History Project website.^[8]