Thant Myint-U
Thant Myint-U
Thant Myint-U (Burmese:သန္႔ျမင့္ဦး
[θa̰ɴ mjɪ̰ɴ ʔú]; born
31 January 1966) is a historian, a past Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,
an adviser to the President of Myanmar, and the founder and chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust.[1] He authored two bestselling[2][3] and critically acclaimed books, The
River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma[4] and Where China Meets India: Burma
and the New Crossroads of Asia[5]
He
was named by the Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the "100 Leading Global
Thinkers" of 2013 and by Prospect Magazine
as one of 50 "World Thinkers" of 2014.[6][7] He was voted 15th in Prospect
Magazine's subsequent poll of "World's Leading Thinkers"[8]
Contents
Early life and education
Thant
Myint-U was born in New York City to Burmese
parents and is the grandson of former Secretary-General
of the United Nations U Thant. He has three
sisters.[9] According to him, he has always been a
Myanmar national.[10]
He
was educated at Harvard University,
the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
, Johns Hopkins
University and the University of
Cambridge. He received his PhD
in History from Cambridge University
in 1996, MA in International
Relations and International
Economics from Johns Hopkins
University and BSc in Government and Economics from Harvard University
. From 1994-99 he was a Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge,[11] where he taught Asian and British
imperial history. He lectured extensively, including at Stanford, University of
California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Cambridge,
London University, and the Australian National University.[citation needed]
Career
He
has served in three UN peacekeeping operations. He first worked with the UN
from 1992-3, as a Human Rights Officer in the UN Transitional Authority for Cambodia in Phnom Penh. In 1994 he was the Chief
Spokesman for the UN Protection Force
in the former Yugoslavia, based in Sarajevo, and in 1996 was a Political Advisor in
the Office of the UN's Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.[12]
In
2000 he joined the UN Secretariat in New York, working first in the Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and then in the United
Nations Department of Political Affairs, becoming in 2004 Chief of
the Policy Planning Unit in that department.[13]
During
this time he was a member of the secretariat of the Secretary-General's Panel
on Threats, Challenges and Change (High Level Threat
Panel) which produced "A More Secure World: Our Shared
Responsibility".[14] In late 2005 and early 2006 he was
briefly a Senior Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General
coordinating the establishment of the new Peacebuilding Commission,
Peacebuilding Support Office, and the Mediation Support Unit, and other related
reforms.[citation needed]
Aside
from being Chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, he is currently a member of
the (President of Myanmar's) National Economic and Social Advisory Council,[15] a Special Advisor to the Myanmar
government at the Myanmar Peace Centre,
a Senior Research Fellow of the Myanmar Development Resources Institute, a
member of the Fund Board of the (Myanmar) Livelihoods and Food Security Trust
Fund.,[16] and the Vice Chairman of the World
Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for South East Asia. He has held
visiting fellowships at Harvard University, the International
Peace Institute in New York,[17] and the Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies in Singapore, was for many years a Research Associate of the Cambridge
Centre for History and Economics, and is a Research Associate of the Cambridge
Centre for South Asian Studies.[citation needed]
Literary works
In
addition to The River of Lost Footsteps and Where China Meets India:
Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, he is also the author of The
Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge University Press 2000) and The UN
Secretariat: A Brief History (Lynne Rienner 2007).[18] He has written for The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
the Los Angeles Times[19] the International Herald Tribune,
The London Review
of Books,[20] the New Statesman, the Far Eastern Economic
Review, Time magazine[21] and The Times
Literary Supplement. He was awarded the "Asia Pacific
Awards" (Asian Affairs Research Council and Mainichi Newspapers)
"Special Prize" in November 2014 for "Where China Meets
India".[citation needed]
References
"Historic Yangon cityscape thrown a lifeline".
Mmtimes.com. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
"Reader favourites this week: Thant Myint-U and Doris
Lessing". Monsters and Critics. 25 October 2007. Retrieved 2
July 2015.
"Thant Myint-U, Amish Tripathi rule book charts - The
Times of India". The Times of India.
See for example John Lancaster,
"Walled Off: Can Burma Escape Its History?", The New Yorker,
11 December 2006
Nicholas Shakespeare, "Burma: A Poisoned Shangri-la", The Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2007
Su Lin Lewis, "Meteoric Fall", Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 2007.
Nicholas Shakespeare, "Burma: A Poisoned Shangri-la", The Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2007
Su Lin Lewis, "Meteoric Fall", Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 2007.
Siddhartha Deb, "Where
China Meets India", The Guardian, 19 August 2011
Profile, foreignpolicy.com; accessed 2 July 2015.
Profile, prospectmagazine.co.uk; accessed 2 July
2015.
"World's Leading Thinkers",
prospectmagazine.co.uk; accessed 2 July 2015.
Myint-U, Thant. The River of
Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (preface).
"Amazon.com:
Thant Myint-U: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle".
www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
Profile,
trin-webtest.trin.cam.ac.uk; accessed 2 July 2015.
Thant Myint-U and Elizabeth
Sellwood, "Knowledge and Multilateral Interventions: The UN's Experiences
and Cambodia and Bosnia-Hercegovina", Royal Institute of International
Affairs (2000)
United Nations Department of Political Affairs website;
accessed 2 July 2015.
"Report of
the Secretary-General's High-level Panel". Un.org. Retrieved 11
August 2012.
"New govt advisory body takes shape".
Mmtimes.com. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
"Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund".
Lift-fund.net. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
Profile,
ipacademy.org; accessed 2 July 2015.
"Lynne Rienner Publishers". Rienner.com.
Retrieved 2 July 2015.
Myint-U, Thant (14 October
2007). "Saving Burma the right way". Los
Angeles Times.
"Thant
Myint-U · What to do about Burma: Are we getting it wrong?".
Lrb.co.uk. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
Myint-U, Thant (30 August 2007). "From Bad to Worse". Time.
Thant
Myint-U
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Native name
|
သန္႔ျမင့္ဦး
|
Born
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31 January 1966 (age 51)
New York City, New York, U.S. |
Alma mater
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Harvard University
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Johns Hopkins University University of Cambridge |
Occupation
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Historian
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Spouse(s)
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Sofia Busch
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Parent(s)
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Tyn Myint-U
Aye Aye Thant |
Relatives
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U Thant (grandfather)
Khin Lei Myint-U (sister) Aye Thi Myint-U (sister) Aye Myint Myint-U (sister) |
Awards
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Credit:Wikipedia
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