Annalena Baerbock will take up a professorship in global leadership at Columbia University in New York this autumn, following the conclusion of her one-year term as president of the United Nations General Assembly on September 8.
Baerbock will serve as co-director of Columbia's Master of Public Administration in Global Leadership programme, a role the university says is designed for executives with at least ten years of professional experience. The three-year appointment is a practice-oriented professorship rather than a traditional research position. Baerbock, the fifth woman to preside over the General Assembly, will be succeeded by Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh.
The transition follows a standard 18-month cooling-off period for former German ministers, though Baerbock's move to academia comes well within that window as she shifts from multilateral diplomacy to training future leaders.