Patrick Mendis

Patrick Mendis (帕特里克·孟迪斯) is an educator, diplomat, author, and executive in government service in the United States. A former American diplomat during the Clinton and Bush administrations, he is now serving as a commissioner of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO at the State Department.After serving as a Rajawali senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a visiting professor of Peking University's School of International Studies, Mendis is currently a distinguished visiting professor of Asian-Pacific affairs at Shangdong University in China as well as an associate-in-research of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. Mendis is serving a distinguished scholar and senior expert at the U.S. Confucius Institute at George Mason University (GMU) and served as a distinguished senior fellow and affiliate professor of public and international affairs in the School of Public Policy at GMU. Dr. Mendis is an adjunct professor of geography and geoinformation science at GMU.Mendis taught MBA/MPA as well as international trade and American foreign policy courses at the University of Minnesota, University of Maryland, and Yale University before joining the U.S. Department of State, where he served under Secretary Madeleine Albright and General Colin Powell. In 2012, Secretary Hillary Clinton appointed Professor Mendis as a commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and reappointed by Secretary John Kerry. He has worked in, and traveled to, more than 120 countries, visited all 50 states in the United States, and visited all but four provinces of China.Earlier in his life, Mendis worked at the Minnesota House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and the United Nations. After his government service (in the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy and State), Mendis returned to academia where he served as the vice pre