LUCK, Edward C.

Edward C. LuckEdward C. Luck is Senior Vice President and Director of Studies at the International Peace Institute and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General, focusing on the responsibility to protect. He was the lead author of the Secretary-General’s report on IMPLEMENTING THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (A/63/677 of 12 January 2009). Dr. Luck is Professor of Practice in International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center on International Organization of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.

Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, he served as the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of International Organization, a research center jointly established by the School of Law of New York University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University.

A frequent media commentator, Dr. Luck has published and testified before Congress on arms control, defense, foreign policy, Russian and East Asian affairs, as well as on United Nations reform and peacekeeping. He is the coeditor of INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ORGANIZATION: CLOSING THE COMPLIANCE GAP with Michael W. Doyle (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and author of its concluding chapter, "Gaps, Commitments, and the Compliance Challenge." Dr. Luck also published MIXED MESSAGES: AMERICAN POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION: 1919–1999. He has edited two other books and published scores of articles in FOREIGN POLICY, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, CURRENT HISTORY, DISARMAMENT, and other scholarly journals, as well as in the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, USA TODAY, NEWSDAY, and other newspapers.

For ten years (1984–94), Dr. Luck served as the president and CEO of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), America's principal center for public education on the world organization, and he subsequently served for four years as the president emeritus of the organization (1994–98). From December 1995 through July 1997, Dr. Luck played a key role in the United Nations reform process as a senior consultant to the Department of Administration and Management of the United Nations and as a staff director of the General Assembly's Open-Ended High-Level Working Group on the Strengthening of the United Nations System.

Dr. Luck holds a BA from Dartmouth College and a series of graduate degrees from Columbia University, including an MIA from the School of International Affairs, the Certificate of the Harriman Institute, and an MA, MPh, and PhD degrees in political science from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.