Join us for a panel discussion on the current crisis of US-Cuban relations featuring Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the former Charge d’Affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba and three Brown University Cuba experts. Since January, the Trump administration has increased its pressure campaign on the socialist government of Cuba, instituting an oil blockade that has already resulted in the worst energy crisis in Cuban history and threatening direct US military intervention to “take Cuba.” Our panelists will help contextualize the current crisis in the longer arc of US-Cuban relations, and discuss with Ambassador DeLaurentis the brief period of normalized diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, leading to the historic 2016 visit of President Obama to Cuba. The panelists will reflect on the challenges facing US-Cuban relations during this moment of fraught geopolitical tensions.
Ambassador (ret.) Jeffrey DeLaurentis serves as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow in International Affairs at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.
During his 28-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis worked almost exclusively on Western Hemisphere issues and as a multilateral diplomat at the United Nations. He served as the first Charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Havana following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. Prior to taking up his Cuba post in August 2014, he was the Ambassador for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Previously, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs and Security Council Coordinator at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
Ambassador DeLaurentis began his State Department career in 1991 as a consular officer in Havana and returned to Cuba as Political-Economic Section Chief in 1999-2002. In Washington, he served as the Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. His last assignment in the Foreign Service was at the Harvard Kennedy School as a Senior Diplomatic Fellow with the Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Project.
Subsequently, Ambassador DeLaurentis was appointed a Centennial Fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Distinguished Resident Fellow in Latin American and Multilateral Diplomacy Studies at the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, George S. McGovern Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, Resident Fellow at the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies’ Cuba Studies Program, and a Senior Advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group. He was also a member of the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team and called back to government service in January 2021 as the Senior Advisor for Security Council Affairs and Acting Deputy Permanent Representative at the U.S. Mission to the UN, a position he held until September 2023. He then began a two-year appointment at Simmons University as the Joan M. Warburg Professor of International Relations. At the same time DeLaurentis also served as a diplomatic advisor on the U.S. interagency task force on Haiti and represented the U.S.on the advisory board of the UN Trust Fund in Support of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) to Haiti, until December 2024. He was subsequently appointed the Magro Family Distinguished Fellow in International Affairs at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College for the 2025 Fall Term.
DeLaurentis is a graduate of the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service and Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. A recipient of multiple State Department awards, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Cuba Study Group. He recently joined the Stimson Center as a Distinguished Fellow and is a member of Stimson’s Latin American Program Advisory Council, and continues as an associate with the David
Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.
