Dan Hamilton

Dan Karl Hamilton is the dean of Waldsee, the German Language Village, during the second half of the summer.  He is also dean of Helvetia Swiss Week. He has been on staff at Concordia Language Villages since 1972 and was a villager for four years. He is fluent in German and has studied French, Russian and Spanish.

Hamilton earned his bachelor's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Hamilton now serves as the Richard von Weizsäcker professor and director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS and as executive director of the American Consortium on European Union Studies. He is the host of The Washington Post/Newsweek International's global online discussion Next Europe.

Hamilton was awarded a Doctor of Humanities, honorus clausus, from Concordia College in 2002.  He serves on academic advisory and selection boards for the Robert Bosch and Körber Foundations. He was awarded the 2007 Transatlantic Leadership Award from the European-American Business Council and the 2006 Transatlantic Business Award from the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union.

Hamilton has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs at the U.S. Department of State; U.S. Special Coordinator for Southeast European Stabilization; Associate Director of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff; Director for Policy in the Bureau of European Affairs; and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador and the U.S. Embassy in Germany. He has also taught at the University of Innsbruck, the Free University of Berlin, and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He has been the Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the DaimlerChrysler Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. In spring 2008 he was the first Robert Bosch Foundation Senior Diplomatic Fellow in the German Foreign Office.

He is a prolific author and a regular media commentator on international relations and international education, and has been awarded Germany's Federal Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz), France's Palmes Academique, and Sweden's Royal Order of the Polar Star. Together with Waldsee

 colleagues Lisa Graefe and Blake Peters he authored Gute Idee! A Handbook of Good Ideas for Teachers of German from Waldsee German Language Village (2009).