Harlan Cleveland

Who was Harlan Cleveland?

Harlan Cleveland was an American diplomat, educator, and author. He served as Lyndon Johnson's U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1965–1969, and earlier as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1961–1965. He was President of the University of Hawaii 1969–1974, and the World Academy of Art and Science in the 1990s and founding dean of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Cleveland also served as Dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from 1956 to 1961.

He was born in New York City to Stanley Cleveland and Marian Van Buren. He attended Phillips Andover Academy and graduated from Princeton University in 1938. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the late 1930s. He was an early advocate and practitioner of online education, teaching courses for the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute and Connected Education in the 1980s and early 1990s.

He authored twelve books, among his best-known are The Knowledge Executive and Nobody in Charge: Essays on the Future of Leadership. He also published hundreds of journal and magazine articles.

He was awarded 22 honorary degrees, the U.S.