Martin S. Indyk

Lowy Distinguished Fellow in U.S.-Middle East Diplomacy

Profile picture

Expert Bio

Martin S. Indyk is the Lowy distinguished fellow in U.S.-Middle East diplomacy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Previously, he was the executive vice president of the Brookings Institution. Indyk served as President Barack Obama's special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from July 2013 to June 2014. Before his time as special envoy, he was vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program and the founding director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.

Indyk served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2001. He also served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council (1993–95) and as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the U.S. Department of State (1997–2000).

Before entering government, Indyk was founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for eight years. He serves on the boards of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia, the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, the Israel Policy Forum, and chairs the Aspen Institute’s Middle East Investment Initiative. Indyk also serves as a member of the advisory boards of the Israel Democracy Institute and America Abroad Media.

Indyk is the author of Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy (A.A. Knopf, 2021) and Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East" (Simon and Schuster, 2009) and the co-author of Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy with Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Lieberthal (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).  

Indyk received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Sydney and a doctorate in international relations from the Australian National University.

affiliations

  • America Abroad Media, advisory board
  • Aspen Institute Middle East Investment Initiative, chairman
  • Credit Suisse Asset Management, senior advisor
  • Institute for National Security Studies (Israel), board director
  • Israel Democracy Institute, advisory board
  • Israel Policy Forum, board director and convener, advisory council 
  • Lowy Institute for International Policy (Australia), board director
  • MeiraGTx, board director

Media Inquiries

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
Clear All
Regions
Topics
Type

Top Stories on CFR

Middle East and North Africa

CFR experts Steven A. Cook and David J. Scheffer join Amnesty International’s Agnes Callamard and Refugee International’s Jeremy Konyndyk to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Japan

The highlights from Kishida Fumio's busy week in Washington.

Genocide and Mass Atrocities

Thirty years ago, Rwanda’s government began a campaign to eradicate the country’s largest minority group. In just one hundred days in 1994, roving militias killed around eight hundred thousand people. Would-be killers were incited to violence by the radio, which encouraged extremists to take to the streets with machetes. The United Nations stood by amid the bloodshed, and many foreign governments, including the United States, declined to intervene before it was too late. What got in the way of humanitarian intervention? And as violent conflict now rages at a clip unseen since then, can the international community learn from the mistakes of its past?