Two months ago, James Steinberg started his typical workday at 8:45 a.m., in a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and fellow State Department secretaries. Later, he’d head to the White House, where he’d meet directly with President Barack Obama or other cabinet members. He’d speak with the press secretary and spend a few hours with reporters.

Sometimes, he’d travel — for about one week every month. He took seven trips to the Balkans and the same to East Asia all in less than two years, plus one extensive trip to Africa and several other countries. He’d meet with world leaders, public policy activists and citizens — ‘reaching out, touching and engaging with people in the countries I visited.’

But now, you might see him or his two daughters Emma, 7, and Jenna, 9, in Eggers Hall on your way to class. In the spring semester, he might be your professor.

You might see him because Steinberg — the same man who was President Bill Clinton’s principal negotiator in the G-8 summits of the 1990s, the same man who transformed the public policy school at the University of Texas-Austin in three short years, and the same man who some in Washington have called ‘the leading foreign policy player of his generation’ — now comes to work on your campus every day as the dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

A brief look at Steinberg’s resume backs up the characterization of his colleagues. Some highlights include serving as the director of policy planning in the State Department from 1994 to 1996; deputy national security adviser from 1997 to 2000; vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution; dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin from 2006 to 2009; and, most recently, deputy secretary of state under Hillary Clinton from 2009 until June 2011.

Maxwell, the No. 1 graduate school for public affairs in the country, seems fitting as his most recent addition to the list.

‘Maxwell is a naturally attractive setting for me,’ Steinberg said.

But Steinberg’s life and work is more than a list of places and dates. Friends, colleagues and family describe Steinberg as someone who demands perfection from himself and expects nearly the same from others; as someone whose level of focus is so intense that he can balance work and home life in a way that most people can’t; and as a mentor who has shaped an entire generation of public policy thinkers in Washington.

Through his government and academic experiences, Steinberg is the symbol for the very type of bridge Maxwell attempts to create between the theoretical and practical. Professor William Banks, director of the search committee that hired Steinberg, said Steinberg is ‘a microcosm — a model, if you will — of the various strengths and aptitudes of the Maxwell School all in one person.’

Steinberg said he became politically inspired at a young age, growing up in a time when Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy promoted a commitment to public service.

In 1979, Steinberg was serving as special assistant to the assistant attorney general. He was in the office on Sunday, Nov. 4, the day the hostages were taken in Iran. He began helping the assistant attorney general in the early hours of the crisis and was later asked to take a heavier role in the office’s duties. It was Steinberg’s first foray into dealing with foreign policy, and it set the tone for what he would go on to do.

He went on to become a leading foreign policy adviser during the Clinton administration, acting as Clinton’s personal representative in the 1998 and 1999 G-8 summits and helping to reshape Clinton’s policy toward China and other nations.

Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former deputy secretary of state during Clinton’s administration, worked with Steinberg during the Clinton years, both when Steinberg was in the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Bureau and when he became deputy national security adviser. In that role, the two were working together on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, Talbott said.

‘I have never known anybody who combined the breadth of knowledge, the analytical acuity, the political sense, the communications skill, for taking complicated issues, boiling them down to their essence and making them clear to the public, to congressional committees and to his superiors, whether that’s the secretary of state or the president of the United States,’ Talbott said. ‘He is just without match in his ability to do those things.’

Jeff Bader, now a visiting scholar with the Brookings Institution, also worked with Steinberg during his time on the National Security Council. Steinberg recruited Bader to be director of China affairs on the NSC in 1997, during a time when the United States was working to rebuild relations with China after they had soured during Clinton’s first term. Steinberg was key in reforming the United States’ policy toward China, and he and Bader took many trips to China together in an attempt to build and nurture a more normalized relationship.

Both Talbott and Bader said Steinberg was a skilled diplomat because he is an effective communicator but does not roll over easily.

‘You need to be awake, alert, as mentally on your game when you’re with him — you don’t say things casually, he’ll pause them, he’ll challenge them, if you say things that are foolish you will know it quickly,’ Bader said.

In his job on the NSC, Steinberg also worked closely with Ken Lieberthal on foreign policy issues related to Asia. Lieberthal served as senior director for Asia from 1998 to 2000.

Steinberg pushed issues into the forefront to warrant the attention of the president. His grasp of the issues was so deep that he could glance over a memo and immediately begin reeling off questions and criticisms.

‘You give him a document that you thought looks pretty good and he would just kind of look through it for about 40 seconds, look up at you and then start picking apart every problem in the document. It was pretty impressive,’ Leiberthal said.

His deep understanding of policy issues comes partially from the way he questions those around him to make sure every angle of an issue is explored. And that Socratic nature in which he operates helped shape the way an entire generation of leaders in Washington now think, said Bill Antholis, managing director of the Brookings Institution and Steinberg’s former chief of staff when he served as director of the Office of Policy Planning.

‘What Jim had that I think everybody in our generation respected the most was the ability to ask the right question and to keep asking questions until we got to the right answer,’ Antholis said.

That approach to policy issues has translated well to Steinberg’s work in academia, at the Brookings Institution and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the UT-Austin, and will likely continue to do so at Syracuse.

When Steinberg left Washington to become dean of the LBJ School at UT-Austin, the school was in desperate need of a kick that would send it to the forefront of higher education in public policy. And Steinberg sent it flying forward as fast as he could.

‘He transformed the place from a good but somewhat sleepy school that focused largely on Texas issues, state and local government, to frankly an intellectual powerhouse that has become a leading voice on all sorts of critical national and global issues,’ said Frank Gavin, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT-Austin.

When Steinberg was hired at UT-Austin, he made it clear that his mission was to advance the international programs, something the school was lacking and students were demanding.

‘Both the LBJ School and UT needed to be more in the world,’ Steinberg said. ‘When I came, even in the early days, I was not very shy about saying this is a problem that the LBJ School needs to address.’

Within about one year of Steinberg coming to UT, he and Gavin conceptualized, presented, developed and opened up to students a new program in global policy studies, a process which Gavin said in academia can sometimes take five to six years.

Steinberg said he sees a real reward in working in a university setting and enjoys interacting with faculty and students, and contributing to society in that way.

‘A lot of policymaker types, they’ll leave Washington and hang out for a little while and they’re dying to get back. That won’t be Jim,’ Gavin said.

Steinberg used his connections in Washington to bring unique opportunities to UT-Austin. During the 2008 election cycle, he personally organized a debate between then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to be held on campus.

When comparing what it takes to accomplish things in government with what it takes in academia, at complex institutions such as a university, Steinberg said certain skills apply to both.

‘You have to build coalitions, enlist people. You can’t just decree something,’ he said.

Maxwell and its students can expect similar methods from Steinberg. Students can expect to be challenged, and answers won’t come easily. Steinberg aims to teach students how to think about issues, and not necessarily to give them the answer.

Students can also expect a professor who is a presence in the room, but not an intimidating one that stifles expression of alternative ideas. They can expect a professor who is easy to talk with, one who makes them feel comfortable and at ease.

That’s because Steinberg is, apart from the high-profile government figure and leading foreign policy mind that his resume suggests, a regular guy. Somehow amid his crushing responsibilities and time commitments, he has hobbies. He is a passionate fly fisherman. (The trout stream in his backyard in Cazenovia is an essential part of the property he chose.) He also loves to cook and is an expert in Szechuan Chinese cooking. He gardens, he runs marathons and he played on the Brookings Institution softball team.

Steinberg’s two daughters have always been his top priority, said his wife, Shere Abbott, who worked in the Obama administration and now also works at SU. In many ways, his move to Syracuse reflects that.

In Washington, his job in the State Department and Abbott’s job in the White House were 24/7, making it hard to spend as much time as they’d like with their two daughters. Since they left government June 24, the two have barely been away from their girls, Abbott said. Much as the two girls have been regular faces at Maxwell since the family arrived, they were also regular faces in the State Department, and Secretary Clinton ‘knew them quite well,’ Abbott said.

Despite the high pressure and long hours that came with his most recent jobs and the ones before, Steinberg’s No. 1 job is being a father.

‘I’d say his first passion and love is to spend time with his girls and he loves kids, which is something nobody in D.C. quite gets or understands about him,’ said Gavin, who worked with Steinberg at UT. ‘Having been around him and going to daddy-daughter balls with him and spent more time watching bad children’s theatre with him, I know he really loves that.’

So, as the school year begins, Steinberg will begin to settle in his new office in Eggers Hall. His office will fill with books, family photos and reminders of the past he has had shaping American foreign policy. And he will begin shaping the way a new generation of public policy professionals will think and ultimately affect the world, as he has throughout his career.

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs and a close friend and colleague of Steinberg’s for more than 20 years, said a question that is frequently asked in the foreign policy field is, ‘Who are the next generation of great foreign policy thinkers? Who will follow in the footsteps of Kissinger … or some of that caliber?’

‘I have the answer,’ Campbell said. ‘And that answer is Jim Steinberg.’

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Published on August 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm