Boston: Just two days after leaving her post as U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright traveled to Boston today to meet with old friends and to pay a visit to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
Secretary Albright was welcomed to the national memorial to President Kennedy by John Shattuck, the Kennedy Library Foundation’s new CEO who recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. Shattuck, a former Harvard Vice President and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State under President Clinton, was recruited by the Kennedy Library Foundation Board to provide the direction and the financial resources needed to further advance the Library’s mission of promoting public service. It was Ambassador Shattuck’s first day at the Kennedy Library.
Madeleine Korbel Albright was nominated by President Clinton on December 5, 1996 as Secretary of State. After being unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she was sworn in as the 64th Secretary of State on January 23, 1997. Secretary Albright was the first female secretary of state and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. She is a graduate of Wellesley College. This was her first visit to the Kennedy Library.
At an afternoon ceremony, Secretary Albright and Ambassador Shattuck were both welcomed to the Kennedy Library by Paul G. Kirk, Jr., Chairman of the Kennedy Library Foundation Board of Directors. Ambassador Shattuck then presented Secretary Albright with a bronze bust of President John F. Kennedy in appreciation for her lifelong commitment to public service. After the presentation, Kirk and Shattuck conducted a private tour of the Library and Museum for Secretary Albright.
Secretary Albright recently succeeded Kirk as Chair of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a non-profit, non-governmental organization whose mission is to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide.
As the new Chief Executive Officer for the Kennedy Library Foundation, John Shattuck brings nearly three decades of experience in government service and the nonprofit sector. In 1993 he was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. While serving in this position, he worked to end the war in Bosnia and negotiate the Dayton Peace Agreement, establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, restore a democratically-elected government to Haiti, administer U. S. assistance to new and emerging democracies and raise the profile of human rights in U.S. foreign policy after the end of the Cold War. In 1998 Shattuck was again nominated for a major foreign affairs position by the President and confirmed by the Senate, this time as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Shattuck is married to Ellen Hume, a journalist, teacher and Wall Street Journal reporter and former Executive Director of the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. They and their children relocated from Prague to Newton earlier this month.
Before entering government service, Shattuck was at Harvard, where he held the position of vice-president for government, community and public affairs from 1984 to 1993, also lecturing on civil liberties at the Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. A founder of the Cambridge Partnership for Public Education, Shattuck worked to expand Harvard’s role in assisting the Cambridge and Boston public schools, including the creation of a new program of fellowships for Cambridge and Boston teachers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Shattuck’s public service career began at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was Executive Director of the ACLU Washington office and national staff counsel from 1971 to 1984. He was involved in all major civil rights and civil liberties issues during the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, including the defense of federal civil rights legislation, protection of the federal courts against congressional efforts to limit their jurisdiction, and legislative expansion of the rights of women.
Shattuck is a 1970 graduate of Yale Law School. He received his BA from Yale, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1965 and an MA with First Class Honors in law from Cambridge University in 1967. Shattuck’s first wife, Petra, who died in 1988, was a graduate of Boston University Law School, a lecturer at the Harvard University Extension School, and an associate at the Boston law firm of Palmer & Dodge. John Shattuck has four children. Jessica, 28, a writer in New York, Rebecca, 22, who will enter the Peace Corps in September as a volunteer in Nicaragua, Peter, 19, a student at Yale and Susannah, 9, who is in fourth grade.
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Kennedy Library and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.