The Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the United States, who previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon from 2004 to 2008. He received his undergraduate degree in History and Fine Arts from Ball State University in Indiana in 1981 and earned a Master's in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1983. He joined the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in 1993 and studied Arabic at the University of Jordan in the Jordanian capital, Amman, from 1994 to 1995.