Shirley Williams

Shirley Williams is Public Service Professor of Electoral Politics Emerita. A member of the British House of Lords since 1993, she was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2001 to November 2004. She is a board member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Moscow School of Political Studies, a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee of the Century Foundation (New York), a Commissioner for the International Committee on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and advises Prime Minister Gordon Brown on issues of nuclear proliferation. In Britain she serves on the board of the Institute of Public Policy Research. Previously she was on the advisory council to the U.N. Secretary-General on the fourth World Womens Conference and a member of the European Commissions Comité des Sages. From 1974 to 1979 she was a member of the British cabinet, serving as Secretary of State for Education and Science, Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, and Paymaster General. She was a Labour MP from 1964 to 1979 and a Social Democrat MP from 1981 to 1983, having cofounded the Social Democratic Party in 1981 and served as its President from 1982 to 1988. A frequent broadcaster, her published work includes: Politics Is for People, A Job to Live, Ambition and Beyond: Career Paths of American Politicians (with Edward Lasher Jr.), Snakes and Ladders: A Political Diary, and, most recently, God and Caesar: Reflections on Politics and Religion.