- Kishore Mahbubani
Professor, National University of Singapore
Scholars
Kishore Mahbubani is Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the
National University of Singapore, where he also served as the Founding Dean of
the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy from 2004 to 2017. Before that, he
served in the Singapore Foreign Service for 33 years, notably as Singapore’s
Ambassador to the UN and twice as President of the UN Security Council in
January 2001 and May 2002. He has had postings in Cambodia (where he served
during the war in 1973-74), Malaysia, Washington DC and New York. He was
Permanent Secretary at the Singapore Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998.
Prof Mahbubani has spoken and published globally. He has authored seven
books: Can Asians Think?, Beyond the Age of Innocence, The New Asian Hemisphere,
The Great Convergence (selected by Financial Times as one of the best books of
2013), Can Singapore Survive? and The ASEAN Miracle (co-authored with Jeffery
Sng). His latest book, Has the West Lost it?, was published in April 2018.He graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Philosophy from the
University of Singapore under a President’s Scholarship. From Dalhousie
University, Canada, he received a Master’s degree in Philosophy and an honorary
doctorate. He has held visiting appointments at Columbia University, Harvard
University and Fudan University, including a year-long fellowship at the Harvard
University Center for International Affairs from 1991-1992. He was selected as
one of Prospect magazine’s top 50 world thinkers in 2014 and as one of Foreign
Policy’s Top Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011. In March 2009, he was listed by
the Financial Times among the Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on
the future of capitalism, and in 2011 was described by Foreign Policy as “the
muse of the Asian century”.
