Gary Sick

Gary Sick is a senior research scholar and an adjunct professor of international affairs at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

He is the author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter With Iran (Random House 1985) and October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (Random House 1991).

Sick served on the National Security Council under presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.

He was the deputy director for international affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. Sick is also a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and the chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.

Sick is the executive director of Gulf/2000, an international online research project on political, economic and security developments in the Persian Gulf, being conducted at Columbia University since 1993 with support from the W. Alton Jones, Ford, MacArthur, Carnegie, Soros, Rockefeller, and ExxonMobil Foundations.