Julia E. Sweig Named Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America

August 17, 2005 – Council Fellow Julia E. Sweig, a leading expert on U.S.-Latin American relations, has been named the Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for Latin America Studies and director of the Council’s Latin America Program, Council President Richard N. Haass announced. “Julia was the obvious choice to be the next holder of the Rockefeller Chair,” said Haass. 

Sweig is directing a new project on the global phenomenon of anti-Americanism, which will result in a Council book, Friendly Fire: Anti-Americanism Gone Global and What to Do About It (PublicAffairs), to be published next spring. Her book analyzes the historic and contemporary foundations of the recent anti-American backlash, particularly among governments and populations in those countries the United States has long counted among its closest allies. 

Since coming to the Council in 1998, Sweig has served as project director of the Andes 2020 Commission, an initiative of the Council’s Center for Preventive Action, which culminated in 2004 with the release of a major new strategy for Colombia and the Andean region. During her stewardship of the Council’s Cuba program she directed and staffed two Council-sponsored Independent Task Forces setting forth new directions for U.S. policy toward Cuba and directed roundtable series on Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, and other issues in Latin America.

Sweig has written extensively on Latin American issues and is the author of numerous scholarly articles, opinion pieces, and congressional testimony on Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Latin America, and American foreign policy.  Her book Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard University Press) won the2003 American Historical Association’s Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar.

She holds a B.A. from the University of California and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Sweig also serves on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs en Español.

Created in 1995, the Nelson and David Rockefeller Chair in Latin America Studies honors these two distinguished Americans who influenced the development of U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere during the past half-century.