NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ Jack Matlock, who served as U.S. ambassador to the
Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, will reflect on changes in U.S. foreign
diplomacy from the Cold War to the War on Terror during an upcoming
lecture at Vanderbilt.
Matlock‘s lecture will begin at 4:10 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in
Wilson Hall, Room 126. The lecture is free and open to the public.
First posted to Moscow in 1961, Matlock spent 11 of his 35 years in the
foreign service in the Soviet Union. He was special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan for national security affairs and senior
director for European and Soviet Affairs on the National Security
Council from 1983 to 1986. During this time, he helped to formulate
Reagan‘s negotiating position.
Matlock was ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983. Before his
appointment as ambassador to Moscow, he served at the American embassy
in the Soviet Union as deputy chief of mission (1974 to 1978) and
chargÈ d‘affairs ad interim (1981).
Matlock is the author of Autopsy on an Empire: The American
Ambassador‘s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Reagan and
Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. He is currently working on a book
titled From the Cold War to the War on Terror: What has Changed.
Matlock is the recipient of the Department of State‘s Wilbur J. Carr
Award, among numerous other public service awards. He most recently was
the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor in the Practice of
International Diplomacy at Columbia University.
Media contact: Kara Furlong, (615) 322-2706
kara.c.furlong@vanderbilt.edu