Biden appoints former Taiwan affairs official, professor to NSEB

Washington, March 22 (CNA) U.S. President Joe Biden has appointed a former country specialist for Taiwan and a visiting professor at National Chengchi University to the National Security Education Board (NSEB).

The appointment of Karl Eikenberry and Patrick Mendis to the 14-member NSEB, which provides strategic guidance and oversight for the National Security Education Program, was made public in a statement issued by the White House on Friday.

According to the White House, Eikenberry is a distinguished senior fellow at the Stimson Center and also a faculty member of Schwarzman College and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Eikenberry was the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011.

He subsequently served as country director for China and Taiwan in the Office of Secretary of Defense, and later as defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China.

In 2019, he led a group of academics from Stanford University on a six-day political and security fact-finding visit to Taiwan, during which time Eikenberry also met with then-Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), who currently heads the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, Mendis is a distinguished visiting professor of trans-Atlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland as well as a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, the White House said.

Mendis is a former diplomat who previously worked as the secretariat director of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

An alumnus of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Mendis has authored over 200 books, journal articles, newspaper columns and government reports, and also taught at more than 25 Chinese universities and academies, it added.

Recently, Mendis wrote an article co-authored with Polish academic Antonina Luszczykiewicz describing how Taiwan's meaningful participation in the United Nations is far more than just a matter of international presence.

This piece titled "Why the World Needs a Democratic Taiwan at the U.N." was published by The National Interest magazine in September 2023.