Elizabeth Shackelford joins the Dickey Center as Senior Policy Director

The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding is thrilled to announce that Elizabeth Shackelford has joined us as Senior Policy Director. 

Shackelford joins the Dickey Center after a distinguished career as a U.S. diplomat, educator, policy analyst, writer, and lawyer, most recently as a Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She served as a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department, with postings in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work.

She gained international recognition for her principled resignation in protest of the State Department policies of the Trump administration, which sparked important discussions about diplomacy and governance. That led to her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, which chronicles the challenges facing US foreign policy in the modern world. 

As the Dickey Center's spring '24 Magro Family Distinguished Visitor in International Affairs, Shackelford taught the International Studies Minor course "Violence & Security," a multidisciplinary introduction to scholarship on the causes, consequences, and possible prevention of armed violence between groups. 

Working closely with the Dickey Center's staff and affiliated faculty, she will oversee special initiatives, including Dissent & Democracy, as well as continuing work on the Middle East Dialogue, launched last fall as part of the Dartmouth Dialogue Project. She will also lead exciting new work looking at US diplomacy and multilateral capacities and support the Dickey Center's efforts to expand opportunities for students interested in careers in international affairs. 

"Lizzy is a first-rate diplomat, policy analyst, and educator, and I'm delighted we can bring her talents to the Dickey Center and the College. As we work to connect Dartmouth's world class scholarship to real-world issues, and show students creative international problem-solving, we will benefit from her expertise, leadership skills and perspective drawn from working to prevent conflict, resolve differences and speak in clear terms. Our students, faculty and community can tap her professional knowledge to better address the pressing international issues of our time," said Dickey Center Director Victoria K. Holt.

Elizabeth Shackelford has a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated as a history major from Duke University in '01.