Richard Newton Gardner

Richard N. Gardner, the Professor Emeritus of Law and International Organization, joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 1957, after practicing law for three years at Coudert Brothers in New York. Gardner served in the Kennedy administration as deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 1961 to 1965. He was the senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1965 to 1966 and a member of the President’s Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy from 1970 to 1971. In 1975, Gardner served as a U.S. member of and rapporteur for a group of high-level experts focused on restructuring the United Nations. In 1992, he was an adviser to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.
Gardner served as the U.S. public delegate to the 55th U.N. General Assembly in 2000. He was also a member of the Trilateral Commission from 1974 to 2005, the U.S. ambassador to Italy from 1977 to 1981, and the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1993 to 1997. Gardner is a former member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations and a former member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. In 1963, he received the Arthur S. Flemming Award in recognition of his outstanding work in the federal government. His Research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, with a special emphasis on the United Nations and international organizations, including economic organizations such as the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.