Walter Laqueur

Chairman of the International Research Council, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Walter Laqueur was the chairman of the International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. from 1969 to 2001.

Born in Breslau, Germany (present-day Wroclaw, Poland), in 1921, Laqueur lived and worked on a kibbutz in Palestine/Israel from 1938 to 1953 — and has lived since in London and Washington.

Mr. Laqueur is considered to be one of the master historians of 20th-century Europe and is the author of more than 20 books, including “A History of Zionism” (1972), “The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost” (1989), “Fascism: Past, Present, Future” (1996) — and “The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism” (2006).

Mr. Laqueur was head of the Institute of Contemporary History in London from 1965 to 1995, where he was a cofounder and editor of the Journal of Contemporary History, and the director of the Wiener Library in London, the leading institute for the study of anti-Semitism.

He has taught at Georgetown, Chicago, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brandeis and Tel Aviv universities. He lives in Washington, D.C.