Iowa City Foreign Relations Council Presents: State of State: One Year into the Trump Administration

Published: March 22, 2018, 10 a.m.

Laura Kennedy served almost four decades as a U.S. career diplomat. She spent much of her career working in or on the former Soviet Union and served in Geneva and Vienna (thrice) on multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation (conventional, nuclear and bio) as well as a number of temporary assignments in New York, including the 2010 and 2015 NPT Review Conferences. She retired in 2013 but was soon after recalled to service to head U.S. missions in Turkmenistan and Vienna. She retired again in 2015.

Kennedy's assignments included Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Ambassador to Turkmenistan, Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, U.S. Special Representative for Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Issues, Deputy Commandant of the National War College, Charge d'Affaires in Armenia, and Deputy Political section chief in Moscow and Ankara. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and serves on the boards of the World Affairs Council in DC, the Arms Control Association, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and Foreign Policy for America. She has lectured at various U.S. institutions including the U.S. Army General Command and Staff College, and the Army War College. A graduate of America's first women's college, Vassar, Kennedy also did graduate work at Stanford and American Universities.

It has been over a year since President Trump was elected into office. In this span of time, observable differences can be seen in how the Trump Administration has chosen to handle the State Department from that of his predecessors. Laura Kennedy draws on her experience and connection to the State Department to discuss its current status.

For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.