Two Worlds

Philip Zelikow
Photo by Jack Looney

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Philip Zelikow did what he had done most days since coming to the University of Virginia from the Harvard faculty in 1998—he went to work at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, where he served as director. And with the rest of the world he watched as members of al-Qaida perpetrated the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. In his own words, he was “riveted and saddened” by what he saw happening. Within the next few years, Zelikow would take a leave from the University to accept the role of executive director of the 9/11 Commission, another chapter in his history of being called to national service while at U.Va.

Some have speculated Zelikow wound up leading the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (a.k.a. “the 9/11 Commission”) because of his professional association with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice—with whom in the 1990s he co-wrote a book about Germany’s reunification—but Zelikow actually was suggested for the position by the commission’s vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana. Why Zelikow? He had served as executive director of two other commissions that navigated the partisan divide’s tricky shoals to reach consensus: the National Commission on Election Reform (co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs and chaired by former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the wake of the 2000 election, which led to passage of the federal “Help America Vote Act of 2002”) and the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age (which managed to bridge the concerns of intelligence officials and civil-liberties advocates).

While some were bothered that the report of the 9/11 Commission did not lay blame at the door of either the Clinton or Bush administration, Zelikow contends that was the intention of the commissioners—whose desire was to lay out “the facts and let the American people decide.” The “factual story the commission told holds up almost completely,” he says, and over time as new facts about the 9/11 attacks become known others will be able to build on what was published in July 2004.

After completing work with the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow didn’t get his awaited permanent return to Charlottesville. In early 2005, Rice, newly installed as secretary of state, appointed him counselor of the U.S. Department of State. Bob Woodward, in his book State of Denial, describes Zelikow as a critic of the administration’s conduct of the Iraq War in 2005–2006. Zelikow traveled to Iraq multiple times, and his observations led to authoring the administration’s “clear, hold and build strategy,” in which American troops first clear insurgents from an area house by house and then maintain a neighborhood presence. Reflecting on his State Department service, Zelikow says he just wants “the country to win the war, so I raised constructive criticism.”

Zelikow left the administration in April 2007, and returned to the position he has held since 1998, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History. Committed to keeping “one foot in the world of ideas and the other in the world of policy,” he also accepted service on the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Global Development Program, which strives to assist those in the developing world in lifting themselves out of poverty and hunger. The foundation aids small farmers in improving crop production and market access—while also providing access to financial institutions that many in the West take for granted. Based in the belief that “Every human life has equal value,” Zelikow says the foundation could provide “game-changing innovations to alleviate” poverty.

Zelikow also works with the Council on Foreign Relations in writing the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. According to Zelikow, legislation to combat global warming is coming, and he wants to help “make these plans work” for the West and the developing world.