Patrick Mendis, MA '86, has been appointed as a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland. He is currently teaching a graduate "Seminar on Sino-American Relations and International Organizations" in the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies. Last year, Prof. Mendis lectured at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the University of Warsaw after returning home in the Washington, DC, area from Taiwan.
He served as a Taiwan fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Republic of China (ROC) and a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Prior to this, the former US national commissioner to UNESCO at the Department of State -- appointed by the Obama White House -- served as a distinguished visiting professor of Sino-American relations at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In 2011, Prof. Mendis established the annual Edward Burdick Legislative Award at the Humphrey School in honor of his late American "father" and mentor at the Minnesota House of Representatives. The Humphrey alumnus is a former AFS exchange scholar from Sri Lanka to Perham High School in the 1970s and he considers Minnesota his "birthplace" in America.
Prof. Mendis' article "Is Beijing Creating a New Sino-Russian World Order?" may be found by clicking here.