Morton I. Abramowitz


Morton Isaac Abramowitz was an American diplomat and U.S. State Department official. Starting his overseas career in Taipei, Taiwan, after joining the foreign service, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Thailand and Turkey and as the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. He retired from the State Department with the rank of Career Ambassador. In his later life, he acted as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, served as co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Turkey Initiative, and founded the International Crisis Group.

Early life

Morton Isaac Abramowitz was born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, on January 20, 1933, the son of Mendel and Dora Abramowitz. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1953. He then attended Harvard University, earning an M.A. in 1955.
Abramowitz served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserves from 1958 to 1961.
In 1956, Abramowitz joined the United States Department of Labor as a management intern and, then, as a labor economist from 1957 to 1958, while waiting for an appointment at the Department of State.

Career in the Foreign Service

In 1959, he joined the United States Department of State. His first two assignments were as a consular-economic officer in Taipei and an economic officer in Hong Kong. He was known as Ai Mo-huei, his Mandarin name during his tour in Taiwan.
Abramowitz returned to Washington D.C. in 1966, spending the next seven years there in various capacities, including serving as special assistant to Under Secretary Elliot Richardson.
From 1973 to 1978, Abramowitz was political adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command and then deputy assistant secretary of Defense for international affairs.
In 1978, President of the United States Jimmy Carter named Abramowitz United States Ambassador to Thailand, and he held this post from August 9, 1978, until July 31, 1981.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan named Abramowitz as the U.S. representative to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna, with ambassadorial rank.
In 1985, President Reagan nominated Abramowitz as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and Abramowitz held this office from February 1, 1985, through May 19, 1989.
In 1989, President George H. W. Bush named Abramowitz United States Ambassador to Turkey, a post he held until 1991.
In 1990, Abramowitz was awarded the rank of Career Ambassador.

Post-Government career

Abramowitz retired from government service in 1991 and took over as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He retired from that position in 1997. Subsequently, he was a Senior Fellow of The Century Foundation and a director of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Abramowitz was a long-time board member of the International Rescue Committee.
Abramowitz played a leading role in the foundation of the International Crisis Group, and was a board member from its inception in 1995.
Abramowitz served for nine years on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, and upon his retirement in 2007 was awarded its Democracy Service Medal.

Personal life and death

In 1959, Abramowitz married Sheppie Glass, the older sister of composer Philip Glass. Sheppie Abramowitz spent her career advocating on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers for the International Rescue Committee and KIND. The couple were married until her death in April 2024, and had two children. Their son, Michael, worked as a journalist at The Washington Post before becoming president of Freedom House in 2017, and has headed the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; their daughter, Rachel, had a successful career as an entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Times before embarking on a second career in screenwriting with her husband, Joshua Goldin.
Abramowitz died at his home in Washington, D.C., on November 29, 2024, at the age of 91.

Awards

Writing