Michael Shifter is president of the Inter-American Dialogue. He was previously vice president for policy and director of the Dialogue’s democratic governance program. Since 1994, Shifter has played a key role in shaping the Dialogue’s agenda, commissioning policy-relevant articles and reports.
Shifter writes and talks widely on US-Latin American relations and hemispheric affairs. His recent articles have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, Current History, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Journal of Democracy, Harvard International Review and in newspapers and journals in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Chile, Panama, Argentina and Brazil. He is often interviewed by US, Latin American, European and Chinese media, and appears frequently on CNN and BBC. Shifter has lectured about hemispheric policy at leading universities in Latin America and Europe and has testified regularly before the US Congress about US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean.
Prior to joining the Dialogue, Shifter directed the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy and, before that, the Ford Foundation’s governance and human rights program in the Andean region and Southern Cone, where he was based, first, in Lima, Peru and then in Santiago, Chile. In the 1980s, he was representative in Brazil with the Inter-American Foundation, and also worked at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin American Program.
Since 1993, Shifter has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Latin American politics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Latin American Studies Association and is a contributing editor to Current History. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Washington Office on Latin America and on the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Americas Division, and the Social Science Foundation of the Graduate School of International Relations at the University of Denver.
Shifter graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Oberlin College and holds a MA in sociology from Harvard University, where he taught Latin American development and politics for four years.
On March 5, the IE School of Global and Public Affairs’ Transatlantic Relations Initiative and the Observatory on Latin American Politics and Economics held an event moderated by its director, Germán Ríos. Michael Shifter, president of the Dialogue and Susana Malcorra, Dialogue member and dean for the IE School of Global and Public Affairs, spoke about the relations between Latin America and the United States.
Michael Shifter, presidente del Diálogo Interamericano, conversó con France24 sobre la futura relación entre los Estados Unidos y México y las prioridades de la nueva administración Biden respecto al manejo de la pandemia del Covid-19.
Entrevistado por Gonzalo Abarca para el programa Foro Interamericano, Michael Shifter explora varios aspectos de la estrategia del gobierno de Biden hacia América Latina. Se conversó también acerca de las políticas migratorias, la inversión en Centroamérica, la relación entre los Estados Unidos y México y las políticas hacia Venezuela y Cuba.
The country is perhaps more profoundly and bitterly polarized than ever, with a high level of mutual distrust. Trumpism proved not to be a fleeting phenomenon, but a movement that is likely to persist and be part of the US political landscape for some time.
Brent Scowcroft was truly one of the giants of the US foreign policy establishment. We admire his wisdom, prowess as a strategist, and humility as a person. Like few others, he understood the importance of building and sustaining US alliances and respectful relations. At the Dialogue, we are inspired by Scowcroft’s rich legacy.
What the Bush administration showed is how crucial “style” is in diplomacy. Genuine and regular consultations are key to building trust and a sense of community. This is true generally, but especially so in Latin America, where the asymmetry with the United States is so pronounced and has strongly shaped inter-American relations, often with unhappy results.
Su victoria [de Nayib Bukele] refleja cuánto enojo sienten la mayoría de los salvadoreños hacia los dos partidos políticos desacreditados y moribundos del país, que tuvieron la oportunidad de gobernar pero fracasaron.
Despite Bukele’s clear authoritarian tendencies (…) the Salvadoran president is a political juggernaut in a country where an overwhelmingly young population evinces scant concern with the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.
