Abiodun Williams

Abiodun Williams is vice president of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention.  Previously, he served as associate dean of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.  From 2001 to 2007, he served as director of strategic planning in the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General.  In that capacity, he advised Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon on a full range of strategic issues including U.N. reform, conflict prevention, peacebuilding and international migration.  He also managed relations with the U.N.’s international research and training institutes.  He held political and humanitarian affairs positions in U.N. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, and Macedonia from 1994 to 2000.

Williams began his career as an academic and taught international relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, University of Rochester, and Tufts University.  In 1990 he was awarded the Constantine E. Maguire Medal for outstanding service to the School of Foreign Service and its students, and in 1992, he won the School’s Teaching Award.  He was the recipient of a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs in 1990.

Williams has served on the boards of the Academic Council on the U.N. System, the United World Colleges, Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific, Jesuit International Volunteers, and QSI International School of Skopje.   He holds an M.A. (Hons) from Edinburgh University, and M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  He has published widely on conflict prevention, international peacekeeping, and multilateral negotiations.

Publications:

• “The U.S. Military and Public Diplomacy,” Toward A New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy, edited by Philip Seib (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
• "The United Nations and International Crisis Management," Global Forces 2007: Proceedings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI, 2007).
• "The United Nations and Peace Operations," Dean Rusk Center Occasional Papers No. 2 (University of Georgia School of Law, 2003).
• "The United Nations and Preventive Deployment in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," Adapting the United Nations to a Postmodern Era: Lessons Learned, edited by W. Andy Knight (Palgrave, 2001).
• Preventing War: The United Nations and Macedonia (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
• "In Search of Peace: Negotiations to end the Angolan Civil War," Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Case Study (1995).
• "Sierra Leone and the United Nations System," State Society, and the United Nations System: Changing Perspectives on Multilateralism, edited by Keith Krause and W. Andy Knight (United Nations University Press, 1995).
• "Article 2 (7) of the U.N. Charter," Academic Council on the UN System Report #5 (1994).
• "Negotiations and the end of the Angolan Civil War," Making War and Waging Peace: Foreign Intervention in Africa, edited by David R. Smock (USIP Press, 1993).
• Many Voices: Multilateral Negotiations in the World Arena (editor). (Westview Press, 1992).
• "Regional Peacemaking: ECOWAS and the Liberian Civil War," The Diplomatic Record 1990-1991, edited by David Newsom (Westview Press, 1991).

Multimedia:

• “The Role of the United Nations” NPR, September 3, 2009.