Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service may be out one very valuable professor by the end of the school year. The U.S. has nominted Anthony Lake, the former national security adviser to Bill Clinton and Distinguished Professor in Practice of Diplomacy in the SFS, to be chief of UNICEF.

The news comes from the Associated Press, which obtained letters sent from U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice to other United Nations ambassadors touting Lake’s merits as a potential UNICEF chief. Rumors have been floating around about his potential nomination for a while, though. It is likely that he will ultimately be the candidate that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon recommends to UNICEF’s board and who UNICEF approves, too—the chief of UNICEF has always been an American, largely because the U.S. is UNICEF’s greatest contributor.

Rice wrote that Lake would bring “extraordinary experience, strategic vision and energy to UNICEF’s essential work,” the AP reports.  She pointed out his nine years on the board of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, where he served as chair from 2004-2007.

“As chairman, Tony oversaw a significant increase in private funding for the organization,” Rice said. “In addition to his ongoing involvement with the U.S. national committee, he has seen UNICEF in action in countries across Africa, in Haiti, and elsewhere.”

The term of current UNICEF chief Ann Veneman will expire on April 30, at which point Ban will recommend a new cheif to UNICEF’s board.

Lake was a foreign policy adviser to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during their presidential campaigns. He surprised some when he endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008 and has served on the boards of several international aid programs. Lake had been rumored for several positions in the Obama government, but in March of 2009, Lake told the Voice he has been reluctant to reenter government, even while advising the Obama campaign.

“I told [the Obama campaign] I did not want anything and then I reaffirmed that during the course of the campaign,” Lake said. “At a certain age you decide the torch should be passed, and a lot of very competent people could do what I would have been doing.”

Lake declined to comment on the nomination through his assistant, Jeff Mettille.

Want more? Check out the Voice’s post-game coverage.

Photos by Lynn Kirshbaum

Get your cameras ready, Hoyas: sources planning tomorrow’s Duke game against Georgetown have told The Hill that President Barack Obama is going to be there.

Tomorrow’s game is also a special benefit for Darfur. From The Hill:

“Saturday’s game at the MCI Center will raise money for educational programs in the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, and other special guests include NBA star Tracy McGrady, Alexander Aleinikoff, ahe United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, and John Prendergast , Co-founder of Enough, the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity at the Center for American Progress.”

Aleinikoff, of course, recently left his job as Dean of the Law Center for his current post.

Typically, the White House will not confirm the news, but Obama recently attended a George Washington game against Oregon State this past November. John McCain watched the Hoyas beat Syracuse around this time last year.

Photo from the GW Hatchet.

Thanks to Eric Wind for the tip!

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama announced that he was nominating Chai Feldblum, an openly lesbian Georgetown Law professor, to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The EEOC is a federal agency whose purpose is to end workplace discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability or whistle-blowing.

Feldblum has been at the Law Center since 1991, and founded and directed the Georgetown Law Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, a program for students interested in legislative law.  She is an expert on and advocate of disability and gay rights, and was involved in drafting the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Yesterday, Georgetown President John DeGioia sat down with WAMU 88.5’s Kojo Nnamdi to chat about the University and its relationship with the Georgetown neighborhood.

DeGioia covered some perennial issues, like being the first lay president of Georgetown, the relevance of a Jesuit education, how Catholic Georgetown students are and fostering intereligious dialogue.

However, he also made his first public comments about the brouhaha over the IHS symbol that was covered during President Obama’s April 14th speech in Gaston Hall:

I can’t emphasis enough how unfair a criticism of the Obama administration this was … When the advance team came in to set up the podium and the background for the speech, what they typically do is set up a blue screen behind the president with American flags. That had the result over covering up one symbol.

The room that that lecture was held in probably has more religious iconography than any room in the city of Washington. it is the most beautiful, but anyone who would doubt the location of that talk being in a Catholic and Jesuit university would have only of had to hear the president’s words himself. In his speech he drew analogies from the Sermon on the Mount. So of all the criticism we have received in recent years, I thought that one was the most unfair.

More about DeGioia’s thoughts on being a good neighbor after the jump!

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Last weekend, at Trinity Washington University (a small, Catholic school in Northesast D.C. with an all-women’s undergraduate program), University President Patricia McGuire used her commencement speech to upbraid the anti-abortion zealots who were protesting President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame. Here’s your chance to add a little extra oomph to her very powerful speech.

Nice to see you again!

President Barack Obama will be on campus today at 10 a.m. to deliver an address on the future of Guantanamo Bay, according to CNN. This will be the second time in a little over a month that he’s come to Georgetown to deliver a major address.

From CNN:

President Obama will address the future of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Thursday morning in a speech at Georgetown University.

In a speech that is being billed as a major address, Obama is also slated to discuss issues of state secrets, transparency and protecting national security, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Update: Whoops!  Looks like CNN got the location wrong.  The speech is actually at the National Archives, according to the New York Times, which we’ve just corroborated with C-SPAN’s live stream of the event.

Photo from The Official WhiteHouse Photostream, used under a Creative Commons license.

From ruling the ICC to ruling half the globe…

Arturo Valenzuela, a professor of Government and the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in the SFS, was just named as President Obama’s nominee for Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Born in Chile, Valenzuela specializes on Latin American politics and U.S.-Latin American relations. During the Clinton administration, he served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council.

Photo from the SFS website. Thanks to former Voice EIC Tim Fernholz for the tip!

Barack and Michelle Obama picked M. Street restaurant Citronelle for their first date of his presidency last night. Citronelle is a high-end French restaurant run by Chef Michel Richard Citronelle which boasts a 8,000 bottle wine cellar the title of 2nd best D.C. restaurant, according to Washingtonian.

Here’s the part of the ridiculously detailed White House pool report:

At 5:53 the president and first lady emerged from the White House. She was wearing a white short-sleeved top that tied in the back, black capri pants and flats …

Pool is holding at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Unclear where POTUS will be watching the Bulls-Celtics Game 7, but highly unlikely he’s catching the Kentucky Derby while dining …

By the time we came out of the Vietnamese restaurant next door to Citronelle at 7:15, the crowd on M Street was a few hundred in size and behind police tape.

One woman was pacing and shouting into a bullhorn, but it was tough to understand her garbled words. Two phrases your pooler caught: “This is so great that you are here” and “Create fear and terror.” The crowd seemed to be ignoring her.

When service moved one of the motorcade vehicles up, blocking the sightline of crowd, many waiting to catch a glimpse of the president and first lady groaned loudly.

Photo from Forbestraveler.com.

President Obama plans to nominate David Heyman, an adjunct professor in security studies at the School of Foreign Service, as the Assistant Secretary of Policy for the Department of Homeland Security.

Here’s what Security Debrief, a blog about homeland security, had to say about him and the position:

As the chief policy officer in DHS, Heyman will be responsible for helping craft the department’s role as the steward of the national homeland security enterprise. In particular, he will have to play an important part in building trust and confidence and the basis for joint action with other federal agencies; the private sector; state, local, and tribal governments; and our international partners. Perhaps most challenging of all he will have to explain and defend the department’s policies and programs to the myriad of Congressional committees that oversee DHS affairs.

Those of us who know him well, know that he is well-qualified for the challenges ahead.

Heyman previously served as senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.  This semester he taught a course on “Science, Technology and Security.”