Jason Bordoff, Senior Obama White House Official, Joins SIPA Faculty to Run Center on Global Energy Policy
Columbia University Press Release
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Jason Bordoff, special assistant to President Obama and senior director for energy and climate change on the staff of the National Security Council, has joined Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA officials announced. Bordoff will join the faculty as a professor of professional practice and will serve as director of SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
One of the nation’s top energy policy experts, Bordoff also held senior policy roles in the White House’s National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. He joined the Obama administration in April 2009.
“On behalf of the entire SIPA community, I’m pleased to welcome Jason Bordoff to our faculty,” said Dean Robert Lieberman. “He brings an invaluable combination of policy expertise and experience on the front lines of real-world policymaking at the highest level. I’m confident he will be an incredible asset in the classroom and at the energy policy center. SIPA already offers one of the most comprehensive graduate-level programs in energy policy, and I’m sure that Jason will enhance that even more.”
Bordoff’s research and policy interests lie at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security. Before joining the Obama White House, Bordoff was the policy director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative housed at the Brookings Institution. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of the Association of Marshall Scholars.
During the Clinton administration, Bordoff also served as an advisor to deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, the lead U.S. negotiator of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, on a variety of climate change and international trade and tax issues. He was also a consultant with McKinsey & Company, one of the leading global strategy consultancies.
“I’m thrilled to join the Columbia faculty and to build the Center on Global Energy Policy,” Bordoff said. “As we have seen, there are few policy issues more important on the world stage. Energy policy has a profound impact on the global economy and geopolitics. As someone who has relied on academic and think-tank analysis to help inform policy decisions, I know there is a need for more independent, rigorous analysis of the energy policy choices that our leaders face. And there are few places better positioned than Columbia to fill that need, with its world-class reputation, New York location, highly international student body and faculty, and depth and strength in a wide range of disciplines.
“Brooklyn born and bred, I’m also thrilled to be returning to New York to rejoin my friends and family,” he added.
Bordoff graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was treasurer and an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked for the Honorable Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also holds an MLitt degree from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, a BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, and is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City.
