Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. During a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Kurtzer served as U.S. ambassador to Israel and U.S. ambassador to Egypt. He was also a speechwriter and member of Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s Policy Planning Staff and served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. Kurtzer was a member of the Middle East peace teams for Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. He played an instrumental role in formulating and executing U.S. policy, in particular helping to bring about the Madrid peace conference. Following that breakthrough, Kurtzer was named the coordinator of the multilateral peace talks, served as the U.S. representative to the bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Syria, and chaired the U.S. delegation to the multilateral refugee negotiations. Kurtzer is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East and The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011 and editor of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. After retiring from the State Department, he served as a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and as an advisor to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. In 2007, he was named the first commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League. Kurtzer received his PhD in political science from Columbia University.