Two New Englanders join Obama foreign team
to Boston
Two of the four senior foreign policy appointees named today by President Obama have New England roots, and attended elite private high schools here. Both men have played central roles in developing US policy toward North Korea at a time of growing tension over its nuclear weapons program.
And one has played the drums in impromptu gigs in Moscow.
Obama named Christopher R. Hill as ambassador to Baghdad. Hill, who had been the US envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea since 2005, spent part of his childhood in Little Compton, Rhode Island. He attended the Moses Brown School in Providence before going on to do his undergraduate work at Bowdoin College in Maine.
Obama also appointed Alexander Vershbow as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. "Sandy" Vershbow was born in Brookline, grew up in Newton and went to Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, and then on to Yale for his undergraduate degree. He has been US ambassador to the Russian federation as well as ambassador to NATO before becoming the US envoy to South Korea.
See Globe staffer and former Moscow bureau chief David Filipov's profile of Vershbow, including his work as an amateur drummer.
About this blog
About James F. Smith
Jim Smith came home to his native Boston in 2002 to become the Boston Globe's foreign editor after spending 22 years abroad. He was previously based in Buenos Aires and Mexico City for the LA Times, and in Johannesburg, Tokyo and The Hague for the AP. In 2007 he became the Globe's national political editor, coordinating presidential campaign coverage. He is a Yale graduate, and has an MBA. He is married to Maxine Hart and has two sons, Matthew and Daniel.
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