Wilson Center Experts

Alexander Wilde is currently writing on themes of international human rights, democracy and historical memory.  He is Scarff Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lawrence University of Wisconsin in 2011.  A Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, he also serves on advisory boards at the Social Science Research Council, Chilean Millennium Science Initiative and Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center. In recent years he has advised Argentine human rights organizations and award-winning documentary films, including “State of Fear” (2005) on the work of the Peruvian Truth Commission, “The Judge and the General” (2008) on efforts to prosecute Pinochet, “The Reckoning” (2009) on the International Criminal Court, and “Granito” (2011) on the Guatemalan genocide.  He lived and worked in Chile for more than a decade during its long transition to democracy after 1990.

From 2000-04 he was an officer of the Ford Foundation as Vice President for Communications, with global responsibilities for three primary program areas and 12 overseas offices.  He formerly directed Ford’s regional office in Santiago, Chile (1994-99), supporting innovative work in Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.  He developed new programming in human rights, historical memory, freedom of expression, and audiovisual documentary.

From 1987-93, Wilde directed the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an independent nongovernmental organization addressing human rights and U.S. foreign policy, and gave frequent testimony on these issues before the Congress.  From 2004-07 he chaired its Board of Directors. He previously held senior research and management positions at two major new institutions bridging the worlds of ideas and public affairs: the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame (1982-87), and the Woodrow Wilson Center (1978-82). 

Wilde has taught at Georgetown, George Washington, Lawrence, Notre Dame, Haverford College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He is the co-editor (with Scott Mainwaring) of The Progressive Church in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1989) and author of Conversaciones de caballeros (Bogotá, 1982), a historical study of the breakdown of democracy in Colombia in the 1940s.  He has published numerous scholarly articles, essays and reviews.

Education

Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Philosophy and Economics at Keble College, Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship, and received his B.A. from Lawrence University.