A senior Foreign Service officer with more than 25 years of experience - most recently as counselor for public affairs in the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan - has been appointed to serve as a diplomat-in-residence at UCLA for the 2006-07 academic year. Peter J. Kovach is among only 15 Foreign Service officers serving as diplomats-in-residence at universities throughout the United States. While at UCLA, his home department will be the Department of Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Kovach's duties as diplomat-in-residence at UCLA include counseling students on State Department career opportunities, with a particular focus on the Foreign Service, and engaging university and public audiences on issues of American diplomacy in the countries and regions he has been involved with professionally. This year he also will teach a public policy course on public diplomacy.

Before his posting in Pakistan, Kovach served as director of the Office of Public Diplomacy, Bureau of East Asian/Pacific Affairs; director, Department of State Foreign Press Centers; director, Secretariat for International Public Information, Department of State; and director, Office of Strategic Communications, United States Information Agency (USIA). Kovach, a public diplomacy specialist with the rank of minister-counselor, also served in U.S. embassies in Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain and Yemen. His language competencies include Japanese, French, Arabic, Hindi-Urdu, German and Turkish.

Prior to his work in the Foreign Service, Kovach was a television personality and writer-consultant for the Japanese Broadcasting Company. He also taught history of religion at the University of Massachusetts, Goddard College and Wesleyan University. He received a master's degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a master's degree in Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in history and religion (with Asian specialization) from Wesleyan University.
In addition to his post as a diplomat-in-residence at UCLA, Kovach is a member of the 2006-07 class of senior fellows of the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

The UCLA School of Public Affairs was founded in 1994 to educate the next generation of practitioners and academic researchers in the "problem-solving professions" - public policy, social welfare and urban planning. The school is one of the largest and most dynamic of its kind in the nation.

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