Ex President Saakashvili to Lecture at Tufts' Fletcher School

Georgias ex President Mikheil Saakashvili will give lectures as a senior statesman at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Boston Tufts University starting from the 2014 spring academic year.

The dean of the Fletcher School, Admiral James Stavridis welcomed Saakashvili, the leader of The Rose Revolution, to the Fletcher and Tufts community said "he (Saakashvili) is an accomplished leader and statesman, renowned for changing the course of his countrys history and moving it strongly into the trans-Atlantic community, as well as for his impact on the region and indeed the world.

In this role, Saakashvili will conduct major addresses and lectures on European governance and other contemporary international and regional issues, the Fletcher School announced on December 20.

Saakashvili, who has not been in Georgia since early November, said in a post on his Facebook page that he was really thrilled to start working with the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as a senior statesman.

"I am particularly happy to work with the admiral James Stavridis, a real American hero and leader, a man with whom I already have established a long and fruitful relationship in our respective previous positions. As you know, I have decided to focus for the moment on academic work in order to reflect, discuss and debate what has been achieved and what remains to be done in our region. I cannot think about any better start than the opportunity offered by such a leading American school. Thrilled and grateful to those who have made it possible, the Facebook post of Saakashvili read.

A lawyer by training, Saakashvili graduated with honors from the prestigious Kiev University Institute of International Relations and received his master of laws from Columbia University. He studied law at the doctoral level at the George Washington University National Center of Law in Washington, D.C. In 1995, he became the first former Soviet citizen to obtain a diploma in Comparative Law of Human Rights from The International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.