S. Frederick Starr

S. Frederick Starr joined the American Foreign Policy Council as Distinguished Fellow for Eurasia in January 2017. He has served as the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute since its founding at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS in 1996. Starr is also the Head of Advisory Council at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.

Starr is a frequent commentator on the affairs of the region, contributing many articles and op-eds to leading journals and newspapers, and the author of numerous books, monographs, and edited volumes. His most recent books, The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment (Oxford UP, 2023) and Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane (Princeton UP, 2013), have been widely acclaimed. 

Starr was the founding Chairman of the Kennan Institute in Washington, and has served as Assistant and Associate Professor of History at Princeton University (1968-1974), Vice President of Tulane University (1979-1982), President of Oberlin College (1983-94), and President of the Aspen Institute (1994-1996). He was closely involved in planning the University of Central Asia and the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, and is a trustee of Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He earned his PhD in History at Princeton, his MA at King’s College, Cambridge, and his BA at Yale, and holds five honorary degrees.

Starr is also a founding member of the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble of New Orleans and founded the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the single largest non-governmental sponsor of post-Katrina recovery in that city. He has written four books on New Orleans, including New Orleans Unmasqued Edition Dedeaux, 1985), Southern Comfort (MIT Press, 1989), and Inventing New Orleans: The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Mississippi UP, 2001).