Mary and David Boies Chair in U.S. Foreign Policy

This chair was established by a generous gift from Council Board member Mary McInnis Boies and her husband, Council member David Boies. Mary and David recognized they could advance CFR’s mission by endowing a chair not restricted to any one area of study. This enables CFR to address a current or emerging region or topic of interest by appointing a scholar best positioned to address that issue. Because many of CFR’s endowed positions are narrowly defined, the flexibility of this fellowship is especially valuable. Additional support was provided by the Starr International Foundation.

Mary McInnis Boies

Mary Boies is counsel to Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where she specializes in antitrust and corporate commercial litigation. Previously, Boies was founder and managing partner at Boies & McInnis LLP for thirty years. She has served as vice president of CBS Inc., general counsel of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff (alongside CFR Board of Directors chair David Rubenstein), and counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce.

Boies is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and is the chair of its Committee on Nominating and Governance. She is vice chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a private-sector group that connects best business practices to national security agencies. She served on the board of visitors that oversees U.S. Air Force schools including the Air War College, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, the Air Force Research Institute, and the Air Force Institute of Technology. She is a member of the International Rescue Committee’s board of overseers and serves on the boards of the East-West Institute and the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative. Boies also served a term as second circuit representative on the committee established by President Dwight Eisenhower to conduct nonpartisan, professional peer review of federal judicial nominees.

David Boies

David Boies is founder and chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, a law firm founded in 1997. Previously, he was a partner for more than twenty years at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City.

A 1966 magna cum laude graduate of the Yale Law School, Boies is one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. For a unprecedented seven times, he has been named Global International Litigator of the Year by Who’s Who Legal as well as Litigator of the Year by the American Lawyer and runner-up Person of the Year by Time. His awards include the Award of Merit from Yale Law School, the ABA Medal from the American Bar Association, the Vanderbilt Medal from New York University Law School, the Pinnacle Award from the International Dyslexia Association, Outstanding Learning Disabled Achievers Award from the Lab School, the William Brennan Award from the University of Virginia, the Role Model Award from Equality Forum, the Lead by Example Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Center for Justice.

Clients have included Altria, American Express, Apple, Barclays, CBS, DuPont, FDIC, Gary Jackson (former president of then-Blackwater), Heartheaded Productions, HSBC, IBM, Maurice Greenberg and Starr International, NASCAR, numerous NBA players, the NFL, the New York Yankees, Oracle, Sony, Theranos, and many others.

From 1998 to 2000, he served as special trial counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. Boies also served as counsel for former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election Florida vote count. With Ted Olson, he won judgments establishing the constitutional right to marry for gay and lesbian citizens in California.

Mary and David met in 1977 when they negotiated President Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy’s airline deregulation legislation, Mary on behalf of the White House and David as chief counsel and staff director of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. (They continue to debate its merits.) They have been married since 1982 and have two grown children.

Mary and David Boies Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy

2021–24
Gideon Rose

2017–21
Philip H. Gordon