Jon Finer is a Carnegie Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and serves on the Council (Board) of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He served four years as President. Biden’s Principal Deputy National Security Advisor.
During the Obama administration of, Jon was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. He also spent four years at the White House, including as Special Adviser for the Middle East and foreign policy speechwriter for Vice President Biden. He served as a White House Fellow in the Office of the Chief of Staff.
Prior to entering government, Jon was a foreign and national correspondent for The Washington Post, spending almost two years covering the Iraq War, as well as conflicts in Gaza, Georgia, and Israel/Lebanon.
Jon spent a year in Hong Kong as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, working as a reporter and editor for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has taught international affairs at Yale and at Princeton. He holds a law degree from Yale, where he co-founded the International Refugee Assistance Project; an M.Phil in international relations from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Harvard. He was born and raised in Norwich, Vermont.