John Shattuck is an international legal scholar, diplomat and human rights leader. As national staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union he led more than two dozen federal court cases, including a successful challenge to warrantless wiretaps conducted by the Nixon White House.
In 1986, he joined Harvard University as vice president for government, community and public affairs, taught courses on legislative process, privacy, human rights and civil liberties, and was a senior associate at the Kennedy School of Government. In 1993 Shattuck became Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Shattuck helped negotiate the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and was instrumental in establishing the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. From 1998-2000 he served as ambassador to the Czech Republic.
In 2009, he became president of Central European University (CEU), an international graduate institution in Budapest, Hungary, where he defended academic freedom against the increasingly authoritarian regime of Viktor Orban.
He has published over a dozen books including Holding Together: The Hijacking of Rights in America and How to Reclaim Them for Everyone (The New Press 2022).