For ambassador, thesis becomes career

Lewis Lukens GS ’03, the American ambassador to the nations of Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, authored an undergraduate senior thesis that bore more resemblance to his future career than he realized at the time.

More than a decade after he graduated in 1986, Lukens returned to his alma mater to earn a graduate degree from the Wilson School.

With contentious presidential elections in Senegal set to be held Sunday, Lukens has a lot on his plate. But 23 years of diplomatic experience with the Department of State and a childhood spent traveling around the globe with his father, also an ambassador, speak to his credit.

After being nominated to serve as ambassador to these African nations by President Barack Obama, Lukens was confirmed unanimously by the Senate and assumed office in July 2011.

Soon afterward, the new ambassador set up shop in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. He is responsible for maintaining positive relationships with the leaders of both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau and representing the United States to the general public.

The son of the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Congo Alan Lukens ’46, the younger Lukens spent much of his childhood crisscrossing the globe. He lived in Morocco, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa and Denmark, with intermittent stateside returns to Washington, D.C. For high school, Lukens attended St. Paul's School in Concord N.H.

During high school, Lukens spent two summers working with the U.S. Information Agency in Cape Town, South Africa, where his father was stationed. He spent another summer working at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency Library.

Lukens said in a phone interview from Dakar that growing up global, observing his father and working briefly overseas contributed to his general interest in diplomacy.

“Starting at a young age, I had a real appreciation for the importance of what American diplomats do overseas,” he reflected.

Coming from two generations of Princetonians, Lukens said his decision to matriculate to the University was a relatively easy one.

“I’d grown up going to reunions, hearing about Princeton,” he recalled. “I just applied early to Princeton and got in, and that was it.”

At the University, Lukens concentrated in history with a certificate in African studies. He also rowed lightweight crew his freshman year, served as an officer in the Ivy Club and worked at the Housing Office for all four years.

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With a passion for history, Lukens studied the pasts of Africa and the United States. He said he liked the research and writing of history. Learning how to write, he explained, was the most valuable skill that he had taken away from his time at the University.

Despite his thesis, Lukens did not emerge from the Orange Bubble intending to specialize in American foreign policy or with any particular plans to become involved in diplomacy.

Upon graduation, he travelled to Taiwan through the Princeton-in-Asia program and spent two years teaching English at a local university.

Taiwan “was sort of a two- year opportunity to go to Asia, where I had never been before, but also to think about what I wanted to do with my life,” Lukens reflected.

During his second year abroad, he decided that he wanted to join the Foreign Service and took the required examination.

While waiting the standard two years between the time he took the Foreign Service exam and the time he received an employment offer, Lukens enrolled in law school at American University.

Just as he was finishing his first year, he received a phone call from the Department of State asking him to start the next month. He did.

In the two decades that followed, Lukens was posted in a number of foreign offices around the world. After his first tour in Guangzhou, China, Lukens served in Cote d’Ivoire, Australia, Ireland, Iraq and Canada.

These were interspersed with stints in Washington, D.C., where in 2001 Lukens served as the senior director for administration at the National Security Council during and following 9/11.

Despite a Foreign Service career that spans two decades, his current position in Senegal is only his second in the continent of Africa.

In 2002, Lukens returned to the University to obtain a master’s degree in public policy from the Wilson School. He took a year’s worth of courses centering on international policy, finding the return to his old stomping grounds satisfying.

“It was great to be back at Princeton,” Lukens said. “I had a whole different perspective going back as sort of [in my] mid-thirties.”

Lukens also served as executive director of the Department of State’s Executive Secretariat, managing the office that provides important travel and budgetary support to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and other leaders. He frequently accompanied Clinton on her official trips and met many foreign ambassadors in the process.

In May of 2010, Lukens surveyed the list of available ambassadorial openings and threw his name into the ring for the position in Senegal. Lukens was confirmed by the Senate in June 2011.

He arrived early the next month and began work at the medium-sized U.S. Embassy in Dakar, which employs about 150 Americans and 350 Senegalese and represents 12 different U.S. agencies.

Noting that the ambassador is “basically the C.E.O. of the U.S. government presence in that country,” Lukens explained that his primary task is to coordinate policy with the African governments.

As the “public face” of America, Lukens visits schools and villages, consults with NGOs and attends ribbon-cutting events, doing what he calls “representational work.” Lukens said that this “shows that America is there and involved and trying to help the country along.”

But Senegalese politics may soon present Lukens with some difficult challenges. The upcoming presidential elections, he admitted, are the “big issue” in Senegal for the United States government currently.

Though historically a peaceful democracy in the troubled region, Senegal has been rocked in recent days by violent demonstrations against the 85-year-old president Abdoulaye Wade.

Wade has decided to seek a third term in office, sparking a battle over whether the country’s two-term limit retroactively applies to Wade, who assumed office prior to the law being passed.

On Saturday, protestors in downtown Dakar erected barricades and threw rocks at police, who responded by firing tear gas canisters into the crowd. The protests have already led to six deaths.

The elections are currently scheduled for Feb. 26. Fourteen candidates, two of them women, will be on the ballot.

Guinea-Bissau, where Lukens also serves as ambassador, is also holding presidential elections following the death of its president in January.

The United States has no embassy in that country; instead, it runs its diplomatic relations with Guinea-Bissau out of its embassy in Senegal. Lukens said that he tries to make a trip there about four times a year.

Though the American embassy there concentrates on these potential conflicts, Lukens said it invests much time and money in concrete measures for development.

“We spend a lot of effort trying to help them with their economic development — whether it’s health care, education or agricultural development — trying to help lift them out of poverty,” Lukens said, acknowledging that he collaborates with other embassies and international organizations.

Lukens noted that American diplomacy is a powerful tool for the dissemination of American values, but it is often practiced with some risk. Many diplomats risk their lives to serve at their posts in some of the world’s most unstable regions. Lukens himself experienced the danger first hand when he arrived for a post in Baghdad in 2004.

“We are out there promoting American values, working in some pretty difficult conditions sometimes,” Lukens said. “[We] make sure that ... policy makers in Washington have an accurate picture of what’s happening in every country.”

Correction: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story misstated the high school of Lukens. He attended St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H. The 'Prince' regrets the error.