Center for a New American Security

Mitchell Reiss is president of Washington College. Previously, he was the diplomat-in-residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where he held a number of leadership positions including vice provost for international affairs, dean and director of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies; he also holds appointments in the School of Law and the Government Department and is a senior associate of the CSIS International Security Program.

Reiss was director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department, where he provided Secretary Colin L. Powell with independent strategic advice and policy recommendations from 2003-2005. In 2003, he was asked to serve concurrently as the President's special envoy for the Northern Ireland Peace Process with the rank of Ambassador; in 2005 Secretary Condoleezza Rice asked Reiss to continue in this position, which he did until February 2007. He has also served as the special assistant to the national security adviser at the White House and consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Congressional Research Service, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Prior to coming to William & Mary in 1999, Reiss helped manage the start-up and operations of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a multinational organization designed to deliver $6 billion of energy (500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil/year and two 1,000 MW nuclear power stations) to North Korea. He led KEDO's negotiations with the North Koreans and served as its first General Counsel.

Reiss has a law degree from Columbia Law School, a D.Phil. from Oxford University, a Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and a B.A. from Williams College. He has written two books on international security (Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities and Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Nonproliferation), co-edited and authored Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War and edited The Nuclear Tipping-Point. He has contributed to eighteen other books, and published over 80 articles and reviews. He is currently conducting research on how states negotiate with rogue regimes and terrorist groups. Reiss has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and worked as an attorney at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.