Gareth Evans

Chancellor of the Australian National University

Gareth Evans has been Chancellor of the Australian National University since January 2010. He was a Cabinet Minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments from 1983 to 1996, in the posts of Attorney General, Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Transport and Communications and, from 1988 to 1996, Foreign Minister. During his 21 years in Australian politics he was Leader of the Government in the Senate (1993-1996) and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives (1996-1998). From 2000 to 2009, he was President and CEO of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the independent global conflict prevention and resolution organization.

Evans has written or edited 11 books, including Inside the Hawke-Keating Government: A Cabinet Diary (2014), Nuclear Weapons: The State of Play (co-editor, 2013) and The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (2008). He has also published many newspaper articles and over 100 journal articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights and legal and constitutional reform.

He has honorary doctorates from the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, Carleton University, and Queen’s University.

He has co-chaired two major International Commissions: on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2000-2001), and also Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (2008-2010), and has been a member of a number of others. He currently Co-Chairs the International Advisory Board of the New-York based Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and is Convenor of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

In 2010, Evans was awarded the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Award for Freedom from Fear. Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2011. And in 2012, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), and also elected an honorary Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia (FASSA).