Dennis Jett

Dennis Jett
Born	1945
Nationality	United States
Fields	Diplomacy
Institutions	University of Florida
Alma mater	University of New Mexico
Known for	serving as United States Ambassador to Peru and Mozambique

Dennis Coleman Jett (born 1945) is an American diplomat and academic. He served as the United States ambassador to Mozambique and Peru under the Clinton administration and is currently a professor of international relations at the School of International Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University. From 2000 to 2008 he was the Dean of the International Center and lecturer of political science at the University of Florida.

Jett is a noted expert on peacekeeping.

Service as diplomat

Jett is from New Mexico. He attended the University of New Mexico, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree (1968) and Master of Arts (1969) in economics. [1]

Jett worked as an economist for the New Mexico state government before joining the United States Foreign Service. [2]

Jett was a Foreign Service Officer from 1972 to August 2000. [3] During his time in the Foreign Service he was posted in Buenos Aires, Argentina (political officer, 1990), Tel Aviv, Israel (science attaché), Lilongwe, Malawi (Deputy Chief of Mission), and Monrovia, Liberia (Deputy Chief of Mission). [4]

Jett has also served as Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and on the National Security Council as special assistant to the President and senior director for African affairs. His final assignment for the State Department was as senior advisor on Africa at the Carter Center in Atlanta working on projects in democracy and conflict resolution. [5] [6]

Ambassador to Mozambique

U.S. ambassador to Mozambique

Appointed: July 16, 1993

Presented credentials: November 17, 1993

Terminated mission: Left post, July 20, 1996

Jett served as United States Ambassador to Mozambique.

Jett made the controversial decision to forbid the embassy staff to speak with British Mozambique writer Joseph Hanlon, an advocate of debt cancellation. [7] Jett wrote that "We have spent many hours in the past answering Mr. Hanlon's questions, which failed to improve the quality of his reporting. Using more time of embassy personnel to respond to more of Mr. Hanlon's questions, given his ideological orientation and lack of objectivity, would therefore be a waste of such resources." [8]

Ambassador to Peru

U.S. ambassador to Peru

Appointed: July 2, 1996

Presented credentials: October 16, 1996

Terminated mission: Left post, July 3, 1999

Jett was United States Ambassador to Peru from 1996 to 1999. He attended a reception at the Japanese ambassadorial residence in Lima on December 17, 1996, but left the gathering early, narrowly escaping becoming a hostage, when members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement stormed the residence and held hundreds hostage for 126 days in the incident known as the Japanese embassy hostage crisis.

Jett received his Ph.D. in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1998. His dissertation, "Why Peacekeeping Fails," was published by (Palgrave Macmillan in 2001).

Jett was noted as a critic of American citizen Lori Berenson, who is imprisoned in Peru for her association with MRTA members; he was unsympathetic when a human rights delegation, including Berenson's parents, came to visit in March 1999. In February 2002 Jett wrote an op-ed published in the Washington Post entitled "No Tears for Terrorists," in which he likened Berenson to John Walker Lindh and said Berenson was a terrorist who exercised "monumentally bad judgment." [9] Berenson's parents said that Jett's article was "intensely poisonous" and contained "outrageously mean-spirited, blatantly-inaccurate, and erroneous statements about her to discredit support for her release from her wrongful six-year and four-month incarceration." In mid-2010 Bereson wrote to the pardon commission and to Peruvian President Alan Garcia admitting to her "criminal collaboration with a terrorist organization."http://www.peruviantimes.com/guilt-repentance-and-innocence-lori-berenson-and-her-baby-might-be-going-back-to-prison/206625

University of Florida and Pennsylvania State University

From 2000 to 2008, Jett served as dean of the International Center and lecturer of political science at the University of Florida.

He was the moderator when U.S. Senator John Kerry came to the UF to speak on September 17, 2007, when the Taser incident occurred.

In spring of 2008, he taught Making American Foreign Policy at the University of Florida.

In the summer 2008 he moved to the Pennsylvania State University to become part of the inaugural faculty of the newly created School of International Affairs.

Jett's second book, Why American Foreign Policy Fails (Palgrave Macmillan) was published in May 2008.

Jett received the James F. Zimmerman Award from the University of New Mexico Alumni Association in 2001. [10]

External links

• Profile from the University of Florida Department of Political Science
• Profile from The Political Graveyard
• Profile from NameBase
• Blog profile from Smirking Chimp
• Why Peacekeeping Fails from Google Books
• Articles by Jett
  • The world's only super pouter (Christian Science Monitor, 14 May 2001)
  • No Tears for Terrorists (Washington Post, February 27, 2002)
  • How to end the war (Miami Herald, April 2, 2007)
  • Cementing Democracy: Institution-Building in Mozambique (Nation-Building in Southern Africa, Vol. 17 (4) - Fall 1995)

Persondata
Name	Jett, Dennis Coleman
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Date of birth	1945
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