About Kishore Mahbubani

Kishore Mahbubani is a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Kishore has had the privilege of experiencing two distinct careers. He was a diplomat for the Singapore Foreign Service for 33 years, from 1971 to 2004. During that time, he had postings in Cambodia, Malaysia, Washington DC and New York. He served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN, including two stints as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. He was Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998. As a result of his excellent performance in his diplomatic career, he was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singapore Government in 1998.

Kishore joined academia in 2004, when he was appointed the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School), NUS. He was Dean from 2004 to 2017, and a Professor in the Practice of Public Policy from 2006 to 2019. In April 2019, he was elected as an honorary international member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which has honoured distinguished thinkers, including several of America’s founding fathers, since 1780. In 2026, he was appointed as a Distinguished Guest Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Research of Macau University of Science and Technology.

After graduating from St. Andrew’s School in 1967, Kishore was awarded the President’s Scholarship. He graduated with First-Class Honours in Philosophy from the University of Singapore in 1971. From Dalhousie University, Canada, he received a Master’s degree in Philosophy in 1976 and an honorary doctorate in 1995. He spent a year as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University from 1991 to 1992.

Kishore has achieved several “firsts” in his two careers. He was the Founding Dean of the LKY School, the founding Director of the Civil Service College, and the first Singapore Ambassador to serve on the UN Security Council. He was also the first Singaporean to publish articles in globally renowned journals and newspapers like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times and the Financial Times, and to co-authored articles with distinguished global thought leaders like Kofi Annan and Larry Summers. He has never shied away from taking on new challenges.

He is also a prolific author, having published ten books: Can Asians Think?; Beyond the Age of Innocence; The New Asian Hemisphere; The Great Convergence; Can Singapore Survive?; The ASEAN Miracle (co-authored with Jeffery Sng); Has the West Lost It?;  Has China Won?; The Asian 21st Century, an open access book which has received over 4 million downloads; and a memoir, Living the Asian Century.

Kishore has received significant international recognition for his many accomplishments. In June 2004, he was accorded the Foreign Policy Association Medal for being “a gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker.” He was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in September 2005, and was included in the March 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. Foreign Policy named him as a Top Global Thinker in 2010 and 2011, describing him as “the muse of the Asian century”. He was selected by Prospect magazine as one of the top 50 world thinkers for 2014.

Kishore is currently helming the Asian Peace Programme (APP) at the Asia Research Institute at NUS, which he founded in 2020. The APP works with scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and other experts all over the world to come up with and share practical ideas on how to protect peace in Asia. You can learn more about the APP here: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/asian-peace-programme/