Kishore Mahbubani

Kishore Mahbubani (born 24 October 1948) is a Singaporean diplomat and geopolitical consultant who served as Singapore Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1984 and 1989, and again between 1998 and 2004, and President of the United Nations Security Council between 2001 and 2002.

After stepping down, he remained serving as a senior advisor at the National University of Singapore while engaging in a nine-month sabbatical at various universities, including Harvard University's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute.

In the lead up to Singapore's 50th anniversary of independence, he began a series on "big ideas" that he hoped would help Singapore succeed in the following half-century.

Mahbubani continues to serve in boards and councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the Yale President's Council on International Activities, Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, Indian Prime Minister's Global Advisory Council, Bocconi University's International Advisory Committee, World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on China, and Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize's nominating committee.

He attended Tanjong Katong Technical School and St. Andrew's School before he was awarded the President's Scholarship in 1967 to study at the University of Singapore (now the National University of Singapore), where he graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts with first class honours degree in philosophy.

After his graduation in 1971, Mahbubani joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as a foreign service officer.

His earlier postings included Cambodia, Malaysia and the United States.

He subsequently went on to complete a Master of Arts degree in philosophy at Dalhousie University in 1976.

In addition, he was a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 1991–92.

He currently also serves on the board of the International Advisory Council at Bocconi.

Mahbubani is best known outside Singapore for his books Can Asians Think?, Beyond The Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World, and The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

His articles have appeared in newspapers such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, Time, Newsweek, the Financial Times and the New York Times.

From 1993 to 1998, he held the position of Permanent Secretary at MFA.

Later, he served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Mahbubani was conferred an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Dalhousie University in 1995.

Mahbubani was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singapore government in 1998.

In that role, he served as President of the United Nations Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002.

Mahbubani's academic career began when he was appointed as the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

He is also a Professor in the Practice of Public Policy.

Between 2004 and 2017, he served as Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Mahbubani was born in Singapore to a Sindhi-speaking Hindu family who were displaced from Sindh province during the Partition of India.

The Foreign Policy Association Medal was awarded to him in New York in June 2004 with the following opening words in the citation: "A gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker".

Mahbubani was also listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in September 2005, and included in the March 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism.

Mahbubani was selected as one of Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011 and one of Prospects top 50 world thinkers in 2014.

The secondary school library of the Tampines campus of the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) is named after Mahbubani.

He is also a former chair of the UWCSEA foundation.

The Great Convergence was selected as one of the Financial Times' books of 2013 and longlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize.

Mahbubani also writes regularly for Singapore's The Straits Times.

Mahbubani also spoke as part of Asian Institute of Finance's Distinguished Speaker Series in 2015 with the title "Can ASEAN re-invent itself?"

to over hundreds of financial institution practitioners in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2017, he stepped down as Dean.

His term as Dean was also marked by controversies, most notably when one of the school's senior academics, Dr Huang Jing, was identified as "an agent of influence of a foreign country" by the Government and expelled.

Several months prior to his resignation, he also drew criticism from Law Minister K. Shanmugam and senior diplomats including Ambassador at Large Bilahari Kausikan for one of his commentaries that was published in the Straits Times.

In 2019, Mahbubani was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2019, Mahbubani was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His latest book, Has China Won?, was published in 2020.

In The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, Mahbubani describes how the world has seen more positive change in the past 30 years than the past 300 years.

By prescribing pragmatic solutions for improving the global order – including a 7-7-7 formula that may finally break the logjam in the United Nations Security Council – Mahbubani maps a road away from the geopolitical contours of the nineteenth century.

The book was reviewed, including in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.