CAMBRIDGE, MA—The MIT Center for International Studies announces today that Rt Hon David Miliband MP will join CIS as a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow in Residence from April 11–April 15, 2011. Miliband was the Foreign Secretary for the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 and is an alumnus of the Department of Political Science at MIT.

While at CIS, Miliband will give one major public talk on the war in Afghanistan. He also will meet with faculty and students across the institute who share his interest in international affairs and global environmental issues. In addition, he will visit undergraduate classes in political science, participate in workshops with doctoral students, and meet individually with post-graduate students to learn more about their work.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to have a distinguished practitioner here to visit with students and faculty at MIT. It’s an honor for the Center to host his visit and we look forward to his time with us," said Richard Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies and Ford International Professor of Political Science.

Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. Miliband studied at Oxford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and started his career at the Institute for Public Policy Research. At 29, Miliband became Tony Blair's Head of Policy and was a major contributor to the Labour's manifesto that brought the party to power in 1997. Blair appointed him head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit from 1997 to 2001. After several more posts, he was named the Environment Secretary. As Environment Secretary, Miliband consolidated climate change as a priority for UK policymakers. On the succession of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, Miliband was promoted to Foreign Secretary, at 41, the youngest person to hold the post since David Owen 30 years earlier. In September 2010 Miliband narrowly lost the Labour leadership election to his brother.

A generous gift from Robert E. Wilhelm supports the Center's Wilhelm fellowship. The fellowship is awarded to individuals who have held senior positions in public life and is open, for example, to heads of non-profit agencies, senior officials at the State Department or other government agencies, including ambassadors, or senior officials from the UN or other multilateral agencies. Previous Wilhelm Fellows include: Naomi Chazan, the former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, Ambassador Frances Deng, and Admiral William Fallon.