Paul D. Wolfowitz
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense
Former President, World Bank
Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Chairman, U.S.-Taiwan Business Council

Biography
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz was the Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005 in the Bush administration and then went on to become the president of the World Bank, a position he held from 2005 to 2007. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and holds a position on the board of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council as chairman.

Wolfowitz was born on December 22, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a Polish immigrant who taught mathematics at the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1965, Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the same university. Wolfowitz had a knack for reading books on history and politics. He also participated in the Civil Rights marches during the early 1960s.

In 1972, Wolfowitz studied political science at the University of Chicago. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during the Ronald Reagan presidency. Wolfowitz served as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. He showed his interest in working on plans for the Persian Gulf War under Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

After a brief period of teaching at the National War College in Washington D.C., Wolfowitz returned to politics in 2001. He was chosen as Deputy Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld. The year 2001, America also witnessed the September 11 attacks. Following these attacks, Wolfowitz strongly supported the incursion of Afghanistan. He also supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq for which he drew much criticism.

In 2005, Paul Wolfowitz was appointed as the President of the World Bank, and has also served as a U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia. He was Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University from 1994 to 2001.