Robert A. Pastor

Robert Pastor has been the Vice President of International Affairs and a Professor of International Relations at American University since September 2002. Dr. Pastor leads AU's expanding international programs and activities. He has established and now directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management and the Center for North American Studies at AU. From 1985, Dr. Pastor was Professor of Political Science at Emory University and a Fellow and Founding Director of the Carter Center's Latin American and Caribbean, the Democracy Program, and the China Election Project. Dr. Pastor served as Director of Latin American Affairs on the National Security Council, was nominated to be Ambassador to Panama, and was the Senior Advisor to the Carter - Nunn - Powell Mission in 1994 to negotiate a restoration of constitutional government to Haiti. At The Carter Center, he organized the Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers, which monitored and mediated elections in more than twenty countries around the world. Since 1999, he has been a member of the Governing Board of Common Cause, a grass-roots group to improve democracy in the United States, and was also President of Common Cause Georgia from 1999-2002. He served as Special Advisor to the Carter-Ford National Commission on Election Reform and edited a volume comparing elections in the three countries of North America for the Election Law Journal. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is the author or editor of 15 books, including Democracy in the Americas.