Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia and serves on the advisory panel for global development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. From 2005-07 he was Counselor of the State Department, and in 2003-04 he was executive director of the 9/11 Commission, the most wide-ranging government investigation in U.S. history. In 2001 he directed the Carter-Ford commission on federal election reform, which successfully guided legislation and spending to revamp America’s election systems. From 2001-03 he was also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

When not in government, Zelikow has taught and directed research programs at Harvard University and at University of Virginia, where he directed the Miller Center of Public Affairs from 1998-2005. His books include The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May, Norton); Essence of Decision (revised edition with Graham Allison, Longman); and Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice, Harvard University Press).