Board of Directors

Carl Gershman was President of the National Endowment for Democracy from 1984 to 2021. As NED’s Founding President, he oversaw the creation and dramatic expansion of its grantmaking program as well as NED-sponsored activities to advance democracy, such as the Journal of Democracy, the International Forum for Democratic Studies, the World Movement for Democracy, the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program, and the Center for International Media Assistance. Previously, Mr. Gershman was the U.S. Representative to the U.N.’s Third Committee that deals with human rights, and the Alternate U.S. Representative to the U.N. Security Council. He was previously a Resident Scholar at Freedom House and the Executive Director of Social Democrats, USA. Mr. Gershman has lectured extensively and written for such publications as Commentary, The New Leader, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Democratization, The Washington Quarterly, and the Journal of Democracy. He has received the Order of the Knight’s Cross from the Government of Poland; the Distinguished Person for Advancing Democracy in China from the Chinese Education Democracy Foundation; the International Campaign for Tibet’s 2005 Light of Truth Award; the Order of Brilliant Star from the President of Taiwan; and a number of other honors. He has written and spoken about the Uyghur rights in The Washington Post, Tablet, The Mosaic Podcast, and other outlets. Mr. Gershman received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.