Esther Brimmer and Gordon Goldstein Join CFR

October 20, 2015—Two new adjunct senior fellows, Esther Brimmer and Gordon Goldstein, have joined the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) growing roster of experts in international affairs and economics. 

Esther Brimmer joins CFR as an adjunct senior fellow for international institutions. Brimmer’s research will focus on ideas for preserving cooperation in the global commons, including the maritime and outer space domains. She will also direct a roundtable meeting series on that subject in Washington, DC. Brimmer was recently appointed to be a member of the National Security Education Board. Throughout her career in government and academia Brimmer has specialized in cooperation on global issues and in transatlantic affairs. Brimmer served as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 2009 to 2013, was a member of the policy planning staff from 1999 to 2001, and was special assistant to the undersecretary for political affairs from 1993 to 1995. She has been a professor of international relations at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs since 2013.

Brimmer has also served as director of research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and worked as a senior associate at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees in international relations from Oxford University and her bachelor’s degree from Pomona College.

Gordon Goldstein joins CFR as an adjunct senior fellow focusing on advances in global technology and their consequences for the U.S economy and foreign policy. He will be collaborating with Adjunct Senior Fellow James Dougherty in New York to direct a roundtable meeting series on technology, innovation, and American primacy. Goldstein is a managing director at Silver Lake, the world’s largest investment firm in the global technology industry. He is a former international security advisor to the executive office of the United Nations secretary-general and was a fellow and visiting lecturer at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, as well as a visiting lecturer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. He previously served as co-director of CFR’s study group on the information revolution and American strategy and was a member of the U.S delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications. He currently serves on the board of advisors of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. 

Goldstein received his bachelor’s degree, two masters’ degrees, and doctorate in political science and international relations from Columbia University, where he was an international fellow. He is the author of Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.