18 Facts About Karl Eikenberry

Karl Winfrid Eikenberry was born on November 10,1951 and is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the US ambassador to Afghanistan from April 2009 to July 2011.

Karl Eikenberry serves on the board of the Asia Foundation, American Councils for International Education, the Asia Society of Northern California, Academic Exchange, and the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.

Karl Eikenberry is a faculty member of Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and a member of the Working Group on Science and Technology and US-China Relations organized by the UC San Diego 21st Century China Center and the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations.

Additionally, Karl Eikenberry is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Karl Eikenberry was born in 1951 in Hammond, Indiana and graduated from Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1969.

Karl Eikenberry then attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation in 1973.

Karl Eikenberry received an MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, where he would later return as a national security fellow at the John F Kennedy School of Government.

Karl Eikenberry earned an MA in political science from Stanford University.

Karl Eikenberry served as assistant army attache and later as the defense attache at the United States embassy in Beijing, People's Republic of China.

Karl Eikenberry served two tours of duty in the war in Afghanistan.

Karl Eikenberry succeeded Lieutenant General David Barno as commander, Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, on May 4,2005.

Karl Eikenberry commanded the military task force sent to Pakistan to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the wake of the October 8th, 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

Karl Eikenberry completed his military career in Brussels, Belgium as the Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

On January 29,2009, the New York Times reported that President Barack Obama had chosen Karl Eikenberry to be the next US ambassador to Afghanistan, replacing William Braucher Wood.

In November 2009, Karl Eikenberry sent two classified cables to his superiors in which he assessed the proposed US strategy in Afghanistan.

In September 2011 Eikenberry became the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and subsequently the William J Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Karl Eikenberry was elected to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

In November 2018, Karl Eikenberry was the Keynote Speaker at the Stanford Model United Nations Conference.