CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will visit the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Dec. 7 as part of the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government, which is presented by the University of Illinois System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs to recognize public officials who promote or demonstrate the highest standards of public service.
Yovanovitch received the award in a virtual ceremony April 18 (available for viewing here) but now will meet with students and U. of I. officials for the educational component of the award in conjunction with celebrating the 75th anniversary of IGPA’s founding, says Robin Fretwell Wilson, the director of the institute and the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
“We’re honored to bestow the Douglas Award on Ambassador Yovanovitch, whose career embodies the ethical, dedicated public service that the award recognizes,” Wilson said. “We’re pleased that the university community and especially our students can hear from Ambassador Yovanovitch at a time when ethics in government could not be more important to our democracy.”
The Douglas Award has been given since 1994 to public officials who make significant contributions to the understanding and practice of ethical behavior in public service. It honors the late Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois, who became known as the “conscience of the Senate” because of his deep commitment to high ethical standards while serving as a U.S. senator from 1949-67.
Yovanovitch joins a prestigious group of previous Douglas Award recipients that includes former President Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain, Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens, and Rep. John Lewis.
Yovanovitch is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a nonresident fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. She served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016-19; the Republic of Armenia from 2008-11; and the Kyrgyz Republic from 2005-08. She also oversaw the School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, and was the deputy commandant and international adviser at the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University.
Yovanovitch previously served as the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where she coordinated policy on European and global security issues. At the State Department, she worked on the Russia desk, the Office of European Security Affairs and the Operations Center. She also has worked abroad at U.S. embassies in Moscow; London; Ottawa, Canada; and Mogadishu, Somalia.
More information about the Douglas Award can be found at https://igpa.uillinois.edu/paul-h-douglas-award/.