People

Dr John Adamson is a Fellow of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, and has been Academic Director of the Weidenfeld Scholarships Programme since 2007.

His historical research has received a number of prizes and honours including the University of Cambridge's Seeley Medal for History and Thirlwall Prize, and the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize. Among his publications, The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500-1750 (1999) was named a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and his study of the opening of the English Civil War, The Noble Revolt: the Overthrow of Charles I, published in 2007, won the Samuel Pepys Award and was named by The Economist as one of its Books of the Year. He is a regular reviewer and op-ed writer for The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Literary Review.

He has been a Research Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London; a Visiting Fellow at Yale University and at the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Visiting Scholar and Seminar Moderator at the Aspen Institute (Colorado). His current research interests include the education of policy-makers and the formulation and implementation of public policy in contemporary government.

He was educated at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, and undertook his doctoral research as a Research Scholar at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge.

Peter Baldwin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests focus on the comparative development of the modern state and the long historical roots of seemingly modern policy. His latest book, Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS (Berkeley and New York, 2005), for example, investigates contemporary epidemic disease policy as the outcome of long-established public health strategies dating back at least to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami was educated at Tel Aviv University, where he took his B.A and M.A in History and Hebrew Literature, and Oxford University (St. Antony’s College), from where he received his D.Phil. 

From 1982-1986 he headed the Graduate School of History at Tel Aviv University, and in 1986 he  assumed the Elias Sourasky Chair for Spanish and Latin American Studies. Between 1980-1982, Professor Ben-Ami was a Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College in Oxford, and in 1992 he had a similar fellowship at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. In 1987, he was appointed to be Israel’s first Ambassador in Spain, where he served until December 1991. He was a member of Israel’s delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference and, in 1993, he headed the Israeli delegation at the Multilateral Talks on Refugees in the Middle East held in Ottawa. Professor Ben-Ami also created The Curiel Center for International Studies at Tel Aviv University, which he headed until 1996.

In the same year he was elected to the Knesset, where he served as a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. In July 1999, Professor Ben-Ami became the Minister of Public Security in the Labour Party government of Ehud Barak. In November 2000, he  was appointed foreign minister, a position he held  until March 2001. His comprehensive overview of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the quest for peace, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace. The Arab-Israeli Tragedy was published in 2005.

Professor Ben-Ami now serves as the Vice-President of the Toledo International Centre for Peace.

Anthea Case CBE worked in Her Majesty's Treasury as Deputy Director in the Budget and Public Finances Directorate until 1995, when she joined the National Heritage Memorial Fund (Heritage Lottery Fund) as their Chief Executive,  a role she maintained until 2003.

Anthea has been Chairman of Heritage Link (the national umbrella organisation for historic environment voluntary bodies) since 2003 and is also a Commissioner of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). She is Chair of the East of England Regional Committee of the National Trust, a Trustee of Norwich Heritage and Economic Regeneration Trust (HEART) and the Lakeland Arts Trust, as well as Chair of the CABE/EH Engaging Places Partnership Board. She is Principal Advisor to the Arcadia Trust, as well as a heritage champion and a champion for the East of England region.

Anthea was awarded a CBE for services to heritage in 2003.

Patrick Child is Director of the External Service at the European Commission's Directorate-General for External Relations, a role he assumed in 2010.

He holds a degree in Mathematics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He started his career in the Operational Research Division of the Inland Revenue in 1987. In 1991, he became a Private Secretary to the Minister of State in the Treasury. In 1999, he became a member of Chris Patten’s Cabinet when the latter was European Commissioner for External Relations. He worked on the Commissioner’s external relations portfolio, holding specific responsibility for reform of the management of EU external aid as well as relations with Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Patrick Child was also a policy adviser to the Commissioner for Economic Affairs (including EMU and taxation)  and was a spokesman for the European Commission. In 2004 he became Chef de Cabinet to the Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy. 

Born in Egypt in 1945, Sir Ronald won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he became President of the Oxford Union and earned a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College. He subsequently attended Harvard Business School.

At the age of 26, he co-founded the firm that became Apax Partners. When he stepped down from the chairmanship thirty-three years later, Apax was the largest global private-equity firm based in Europe, with an impressive investment record, more than $20 billion under management, offices in eight countries, and more than 300 staff.  In 2007 he published The Second Bounce of the Ball:, Turning Risk into Opportunity. This book is the distillation of Cohen's 33-year career, building Apax Partners into the largest global private-equity firm based in Europe.

In 2002, he was the joint winner of the British Venture Capital Hall of Fame, Private Equity Award, along with John Moulton.  A recipient of Harvard Business School's Alumni Achievement Award, he is also an honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College.

He was knighted in 2001 for his services to venture capital.

Roxanne Decyk retired as Executive Vice President of Global Government Relations for Royal Dutch Shell plc in December 2010, after serving in that position since June 2009. From 2008 until June 2009, she served as Corporate Affairs and Sustainable Development Director of Royal Dutch Shell plc and from 2005 to 2008, she served as Corporate Affairs Director. From 2002-2005 she served as Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs and Human Resources for Shell US, with responsibility for diversity, external and government affairs, HSE and ethics and compliance. Roxanne joined Shell in April 1999 from Oxford University, where she was pursuing a doctorate in corporate governance. She joined as Vice President of Corporate Strategy of Royal Dutch Shell Group in London, with responsibility for global corporate planning and strategy. 

Early in her career, she practised law with a major US firm and worked in the advertising and public relations fields. From 1991 to 1997, she held senior positions with Amoco Oil Corporation, including Vice President, Commercial Fuels, Senior Vice President, Polymers and at corporate level, where she led strategy, planning and economics. She worked for 10 years in the automotive industry with Navistar, formerly International Harvester Company, where she held positions as Chief of Staff and Senior Vice President of Distribution with responsibility for the company’s dealer network.

Roxanne has served as non-executive director of several companies in both the USA and the UK. She has received the Directors’ Choice Award for outstanding service as a non-executive director and a number of other  awards  from universities and leadership organisations.

Roxanne Decyk received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Illinois and a juris doctorate from Marquette University Wisconsin before moving into the world of business. 

Born in Glasgow in 1964, Niall Ferguson was a Demy at Magdalen College and graduated with First Class Honours in 1985. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1989, and subsequently moved to a Lectureship at Peterhouse. He returned to Oxford in 1992 to become Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, a post he held until 2000, when he was appointed Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford. Two years later he left for the United States to take up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004.

In 2004 he was named by Time magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in the world. A prolific commentator on contemporary politics and economics, he also writes and reviews regularly for the British and American press. He has published many books including Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World ,Empire :How Britain Made the World, Colossus:The Rise and Fall of the American Empire,  The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred, and (with Henry Kaufman) The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms.

Tim Gardam is a British journalist and educator. He studied at Westminster School and gained a double first in English from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was a BBC journalist and broadcasting executive from 1977 to 1996, during which time he created the history programme Timewatch and served as editor of Panorama and Newsnight. Between 1993 and 1996 Tim Gardam was Head of Current Affairs for BBC television and radio.  He was subsequently  Controller of News and Documentaries at Channel Five, where he was a founding member of the editorial team (1996–1998. From 1998 to 2003 he was Director of Television and Director of Programmes at Channel 4, before being appointed by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to lead an independent review of BBC digital radio.  

He was elected Principal of  St Anne’s College, Oxford in March 2004.

An Emirati national, Omar Ghobash holds a BA in Law from Oxford University and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of London.

He began his career with the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moving into private enterprise as an entrepreneur, he established a number of companies in the fields of finance, legal services, and the arts, co-founding one of Dubai’s most successful art galleries, the award-winning  Third Line, and, in March 2008, launching Kaleem Books, a new publishing house specialising in original Arabic fiction.

Omar is a founding donor and board member of the Arab Foundation for Art and Culture and sits on the board of the Khatt Foundation, a non-profit cultural foundation dedicated to design research and cultural exchange between Europe and the Arab World. In 2006, he agreed to fund the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and is on the Board of Trustees for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arab Booker Prize).

Professor Roger Goodman, B.A. (Durham), D.Phil (Oxon) is Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, and a Professorial Fellow, at St Antony's College. He  has been Head of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford since 1 April 2008. As Head, Professor Goodman is responsible to the Vice-Chancellor for the management and academic leadership of the Division. He acts as line manager to the heads of each Department in the Division and acts on behalf of the Divisional Board and its  principal committees. He is also an ex officio member of the University Council, and of its General Purposes, Planning and Resource Allocation and Personnel Committees.

Professor Goodman was University Assessor 1997-8; Acting Warden of St Antony's College 2006-7; and Founding Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies 2004-8. Professor Goodman's main research interests lie in the education and social welfare systems of modern Japan. He is the author of Japan's International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren (OUP, 1990) and Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan (OUP, 2000) and the joint author and editor of a further eight books including, most recently, The 'Big Bang' in Japanese Higher Education: The 2004 Reforms and the Dynamics of Change (2005) and Ageing in Asia: Asia's Position in the New Global Demography (2007). He is currently writing a monograph on the reform of the Japanese higher education system.

Andrew Graham is the former Master of Balliol College, University of Oxford. As well as being a Fellow and Tutor in Economics at Balliol College for many years, Andrew was Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister (1967-1969), Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister (1974-1976) and, from 1988 to 1994, Economic Adviser to John Smith, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Leader of the Labour Party. He has also advised the Governments of Australia, Ethiopia and Zambia.

Following John Smith's death in 1994, Andrew took up a Visiting Fellowship at MIT and began research on the internet. From 1995 to 1998 he led an Economic and Social Research Council project on 'The Information Superhighway: Market Structure, Access and Citizenship'.

In 1997, in conjunction with Gavyn Davies, he wrote Broadcasting, Society and Policy in the Multimedia Age, much of which has become part of the standard defence of public service broadcasting. He has been a consultant to the BBC (1989-1992) and a member of the Board of Channel Four Television Ltd (1998-2005) and has been a trustee of the Scott Trust since 2005.

Sir Ronald Grierson is a banker and industrialist and has, on several occasions, held full-time appointments in government.

His principal business posts were Managing Director of S.G. Warburg (1948-1985) and Vice-Chairman of The General Electric Company (1968-1996). His main public appointments (other than service in HM Forces from 1940-1952) were Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of the UK Industrial Reorganisation Corporation and Director-General for Industry and Technology of the European Commission in Brussels. At various times he also served on the boards of Chrysler Corporation, R.J. Reynolds Nabisco, W.R. Grace & Co., British Aircraft Corporation (now BAE Systems) and International Computers Ltd.

He continues to serve on boards and advisory boards in Europe and the USA (Blackstone Group and Bain & Co. among them) and is chairman of several international philanthropic bodies in the fields of medicine, education and music. From 1984-1990 he was executive chairman of the South Bank Centre, London's principal arts complex. He is also a trustee of the London Symphony Orchestra and of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Professor Andrew Hamilton was admitted as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford on 6 October 2009.

Professor Hamilton, BSc, MSc, PhD, FRS, read Chemistry at the University of Exeter. After studying for a Master’s degree at the University of British Columbia, he received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1980 and then spent a post-doctoral period at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. In 1981 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, then in 1988 served as a Department Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. He joined Yale in 1997 and was a Provost of Yale from 2004 until October 2008, where he combined a wide-range of administrative duties with teaching and research.

His research interests lie at the interface of organic and biological chemistry, with particular focus on the use of synthetic design for the understanding, mimicry and potential disruption of biological processes.

Professor Hamilton’s academic achievements have been widely recognised internationally. In 1999 he received the Arthur C Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and received the International Izatt Christiansen Award in Macrocyclic Chemistry in 2011.

As founding Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Sasha Havlicek has been responsible for the strategic development of the organisation, heading up programmes, research and policy work in the fields of social cohesion and counter-radicalisation, European neighbourhood and Russia policy and cultural and media dialogue with Muslim communities and the Arab world. She also oversees the Institute's Weidenfeld Scholarships and Leadership Programme, launched with Oxford University in 2007.

Sasha previously served as Senior Programme Director at the US think-tank, the EastWest Institute (EWI), where she developed a prominent portfolio of border management and cross-border conflict mitigation projects, setting up and running field operations across the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia. Sasha also served on a Task Force of the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe in the aftermath of the Balkan wars. 

Sasha sits on the Board of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), which she helped found. She also serves on the board of the Women Without Borders SAVE Initiative and is Chairman of the charity Next Generation Nepal (NGN). She is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

A British national, educated at Bachelors and Masters levels at the London School of Economics (LSE), she also holds a graduate diploma from the Institut D'Etudes Politiques (IEP), Paris.

Susan Hitch manages Lord Sainsbury of Turville's pro bono projects. She is a Trustee of the Institute for Philanthropy, a member of the Commission on Unclaimed Assets, and was Chair of the Balance Foundation.

She taught English at Corpus Christi and Wadham Colleges in Oxford and is a former Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. She is a presenter on BBC Radio Three's Nightwaves, specialising in culture and the arts.  She also taught at the University of Gdansk for the British Council and has a strong interest in Central and Eastern Europe.  She has a strong interest in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and has travelled widely in the new EU accession states. While working for the British Council as a Reader at the University of Gdansk in the early 1990's she founded the Gdansk Theatre Foundation, which is reconstructing a renaissance theatre built for the English actors who toured there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

She is a trustee of the Gate Theatre and of the Orlando Consort.  She is also a Trustee of the Sigrid Rausing Trust.

André Hoffmann was born in 1958, a Swiss national. After attending the Geneva Medical School, he studied Economics at the University of St Gallen and holds a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD. In 1983 he became Head of Administration of the Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat in France. In 1985 André Hoffmann joined James Capel and Co. Corporate Finance Ltd, London, as an associate at the Continental Desk, and later became Manager for European Mergers and Acquisitions. In 1991, he joined Nestlé UK, London, as a brand manager. In 1994, André Hoffmann established a family office dealing with asset management and board directorships.

He is Vice-Chairman of the Board of Roche Holding Ltd and a member of the Board of Glyndebourne Productions Ltd, Brunswick Leasing Ltd, Amazentis SA, MedAssurant Inc and INSEAD as well as Chairman of Nemadi Advisors Ltd and Living Planet Fund Management Co. and Massellaz SA. He is Vice-Chairman of WWF International.

Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, was born in 1951, the first  of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel's 11 children. She is an honours graduate of Harvard University, and holds a law degree from the University of New Mexico, where she was a member of the Law Review. 

She founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance to make Maryland the first, and still only, state that requires young people to engage in community service as a condition of graduation.  As Maryland’s first female Lieutenant Governor, she instituted the Office of Character Education, to provide a focal point for the teaching of responsibility and respect to the next generation.  Before being elected Lieutenant Governor, Mrs. Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. She helped design and launch the nationally-acclaimed Police Corps, a programme that gives college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police officers for four years after graduating.

Mrs Townsend has also been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, where she focused her efforts on faith and public life.   While serving as the Chairman of the Board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mrs. Townsend is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has received ten honorary degrees and has published  articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Monthly, among other publications.

Zelmira Koch is the former Head of Global Division for the Chartwell Education Group.

She graduated with a B.A. Honours in International Business at London's European Business School at University College London. She has an extensive background in business analysis and domestic and international project management and development.

Ms. Koch is fluent in five languages and has worked and lived abroad extensively. Her former positions include senior communications executive at a major crisis management and public relations firm in New York, communications specialist at major European fashion houses in Italy and sales and accounting specialist at a Los Angeles-based food distribution company.

She later became an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in London, where she carried out financial valuations in the firm's Mergers and Acquisitions Media Telecoms Division. She has also worked at the World Economic Forum, providing international marketing and communications support.

Dr Maritta Koch-Weser is the  Founder and President of Earth3000, an international non-profit organisation based in Germany. Earth3000 supports innovations in governance for the  environment and development.

Maritta Koch-Weser has had a distinguished career in international development, as  an anthropologist and environmentalist. Her field experience in international development and the environment spans the regions of Latin America, South & East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and  countries of the former Soviet Union.

She worked for 20 years at the World Bank, where she was closely  involved in developing environmental and social programmes and policies, and in the implementation of major investment projects. She served for two years as Director General of The World Conservation Union (IUCN), the foremost global environmental umbrella organisation.

Subsequently Ms. Koch-Weser served for five years as CEO of The Global Exchange for Social Investment  (GEXSI), a UK Charity which provides a range of poverty and sustainable development oriented investment services. She continues to chair the Board of Trustees for this organisation. She is a member of the international Social Stock Exchange Association  (SSE). In 2009, Ms. Koch-Weser also took on the task of General Coordinator of the program “Amazonia em Transformação: Historia e Perspectivas” at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo.

Ms. Koch-Weser holds PhDs. from the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. She taught Anthropology and Latin American Studies at George Washington University in Washington D.C., and carried out extensive field work in Brazil.

Scientific writer, biographer, and sociologist Wolf Lepenies is the former Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, "a temporary learning community characterised by diversity of discipline, by internationality, and by interculturality".

He is known for his writings exploring the bankruptcy of European intellectuals, as well as his book-length analysis of melancholy, Melancholie und Gesellschaft (Melancholy and Society).

Michael Lewis is CEO of Oceana Investment and a director of Foschini Limited, one of South Africa's foremost retail companies with 1,200 stores. He is actively involved in the biotechnology industry, having co-founded ProChon Biotech Limited, an Israeli-based biotechnology company focusing on bone and cartilage development and tissue engineering.

Mr. Lewis' other interests include general investment, real estate and media. Mr. Lewis has an Honours Degree in Economics and previously worked for Ivory & Sime, Lombard Odier and money management companies in Scotland and England. He is a director of United Trust Bank Limited, a UK merchant bank, and is on the supervisory board of Axel Springer AG.

Mr Lewis is Chairman of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Co-Chair of the Weidenfeld Scholarships and Leadership Programme.

Claus Adolf Moser is a British statistician who has made major contributions in both academia and the Civil Service.

He was made a life peer, with the title Baron Moser of Regents Park in the London Borough of Camden, in 2001. Other honours include the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1996, Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Mérite (France), 1976; and Commander's Cross, Order of Merit (Germany), 1985.

Nada al-Nashif is the Regional Director of the Office for Arab States at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in Beirut.

She joined the ILO in January 2007 from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she had worked since 1991. From 2005-2006 she held the position of Chief of the Regional Bureau for Arab States of UNDP in New York. Her other positions with UNDP included: Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP Lebanon (2000-2004); Deputy Director (1997-2000); Special Assistant to the Administrator (1995-1997); and Programme Officer, then Assistant Resident Representative, UNDP Libya (1992-1995).

Nada al-Nashif started her professional career as an Economic Analyst with the National Bank of Kuwait and gained  a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) from Balliol College, Oxford and an M.A. in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. 

Sir Geoffrey Nice was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1990. He was a lead prosecutor at Slobodan Milosevic's trial in The Hague, and initiated the prosecution's case of linking atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia to Milosevic. He  prosecuted several other cases for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), including that of the Bosnian Croat Dario Kordić, who was subsequently jailed for 25 years, and the successful prosecution of Goran Jelisić.

Sir Geoffrey returned in 2007 to common law and further international work in various fields, including defence. His practice also includes human rights, public law and personal injury. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 2007.

Sir Geoffrey Nice attended St Dunstan's College, Catford, and Keble College, Oxford.

Andrew Paulson is Chairman of the Board of Directors, SUP Fabrik. From 1982-1986, he lived in Berlin and Paris writing novels and from 1987-1993 he lived in Paris, London and Milan working as a photographer. After moving to Moscow in 1993, Mr Paulson developed several publishing projects and, in 2006, founded SUP, which is now the largest online media company in Russia, consisting of LiveJournal, which is the main blogging platform/social network in Russia, Championat, the leading sports site in Russia, and Russia’s principal news site, Gazeta.

He graduated with a BA in French Literature and Literary Criticism from Yale University in 1981 and attended the Yale School of Drama.

Born in Vienna in 1919, George Weidenfeld left Austria for England in 1938. During World War II he worked with the BBC Overseas Service and in 1948 founded the publishing firm, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, with Nigel Nicolson.  In 1949 he became Political Advisor and Chef de Cabinet in Israel to President Weizmann, and spent a year in this capacity.

A British citizen since 1946, Lord Weidenfeld was awarded a peerage in 1976.  From 1992 to 1994, he was Vice-Chairman of the University of Oxford Campaign and since 1994, Vice-President of the Oxford University Development Programme. He is involved with the Europaeum, a network of ten leading European universities.  In 1996 he founded, together with Lord Rothschild and Lord Alexander, the Club of Three (Britain-France-Germany), which later incorporated AMEURUS (America-Europe-Russia).  His Institute for Strategic Dialogue was created in 2006. Also in 2006 he initiated the Weidenfeld Scholarships and Leadership Programme in Oxford.

He has several honorary degrees from universities across Europe including the Diplomatic College Vienna and the University of Exeter.  He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne's College and St. Peter's College, Oxford and of King’s College London. He was made an Honorary Senator of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn (1996), and Magister, Diplomatic College Vienna (1999).  He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Oxford University in June 2010.  He received the Charlemagne Medal for European Media in Aachen (Germany, 2000) and the London Book Fair/Trilogy Lifetime Achievement Award for International Publishing in 2007.  He holds the German Knights Commanders Cross (Badge & Star) of the Order of Merit (1991), the Austrian Cross of Honour First Class for Arts and Science (2002), the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the County of Vienna (2003), the Italian Grand Officer of the Order of Merit (2005) and the Order of Merit of the Land Baden-Württemberg (2008).  In 2008 he signed the Golden Book of the City of Potsdam (Germany). In 2009 he received the Teddy Kollek Life Achievement Award in Jerusalem.  He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 2011.

Among other appointments he is Chairman of Weidenfeld & Nicolson; President of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue; Honorary Chairman, Board of Governors, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; member of Investcorp European Advisory Board; and columnist for Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag , Bild am Sonntag and Huffington Post.