September 21, 2009

Senior fellow at SAIS to head U.S. human rights delegation

Michael Haltzel, senior fellow at SAIS’ Center for Transatlantic Relations, has been named head of the U.S. delegation to the annual two-week human rights conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to be held Sept. 28 to Oct. 9 in Warsaw, Poland. Officially known as the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, the conference brings together national delegations from the 56 countries of the OSCE, making it Europe’s largest human rights gathering. It also includes participation by nongovernmental organizations.

Haltzel has been at the Center for Transatlantic Relations since 2006, following a distinguished career in government service as staff director for European affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where from 1994 to 2005 he was senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., now the vice president. Haltzel’s other previous positions include chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, director of West European Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and vice president for academic affairs at Longwood University.