Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Ambassador Dennis Ross is The Washington Institute's counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow. He is a Foreign Affairs Analyst for Fox News and the first chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank, The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.
Dennis Ross is a scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy. For more than twelve years during the Bush and Clinton administrations, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians in reaching the 1995 Interim Agreement. He successfully brokered the Hebron Accord in 1997, facilitated the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together. Prior to his service as Special Middle East Coordinator under President Bill Clinton, Ambassador Ross served as Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Office in George H. W. Bush's administration.
Ambassador Ross has written two books, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2004) and Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2007). Since 2001, his work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Interest, and the Washington Quarterly. Dennis Ross did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, writing his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making.
