William LeoGrande is a senior fellow at WOLA specializing in U.S. policy toward Latin America, with a special focus on Cuba and Central America. He is professor of Government at American University (AU) in Washington, DC, and former Dean of AU’s School of Public Affairs. He previously served on staff in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues related to Latin America. From 2002 to 2008 he was a member of WOLA’s board of directors and served as vice-chair, a member of the Development Committee, and co-chair of 2015 Annual Human Rights Awards and Benefit Gala.
He is the co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press), which won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2015 Dillon Book Award for the best book on the practice of American diplomacy. He is also the author of Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (University of North Carolina Press), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was a semi-finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He is co-editor of several other volumes, including Cuba at the Crossroads (Rowman and Littlefield); A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution Under Raúl Castro (Rowman and Littlefield); A New Chapter in U.S.-Cuban Relations: Social, Political, and Economic Implications (Palgrave); and A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution (Rowman and Littlefield).
Professor LeoGrande has testified before Congress on a number of occasions at hearings on El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Cuba. He has also been a consultant to the Executive Branch including the Department of State, Department of Justice, the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (Kissinger Commission), the Study Commission on U.S. Policy Toward Southern Africa (Rockefeller Commission), and the President’s Commission on World Hunger, and also to number of private foundations.
Professor LeoGrande appears frequently in the media as a commentator and he has written for a wide range of policy-oriented and popular magazines and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Newsweek, The New Republic, The Nation, The National Interest, the American Conservative, LeMonde Diplomatique and others.
