Michael Haltzel is Chairman Emeritus of the Transatlantic Leadership Network.  He was Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University SAIS 2006-2024. From 1994 to 2005, Dr. Haltzel served as Democratic Staff Director, Subcommittee on European Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and European policy advisor to President (then-Senator) Joseph R. Biden, Jr. In 2009-10 Dr. Haltzel headed U.S. Government delegations to three multi-week OSCE review conferences in Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Vienna.

His other previous positions include Chief of the European Division, Library of Congress; Director of West European Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center; Vice President for Academic Affairs, Longwood University (Virginia); and Deputy Director, Aspen Institute Berlin.  In 2015-16 he was Visiting Senior Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

The author of Der Abbau der deutschen ständischen Selbstverwaltung in den Ostseeprovinzen Russlands 1855-1905 (Marburg, 1977), Dr. Haltzel is coauthor, editor, or coeditor of nine other books and author of dozens of refereed scholarly articles.  His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, POLITICO and U.S. News & World Report.  Haltzel is a frequent commentator on U.S. and European electronic media and was for several years a blogger for the Huffington Post.

Haltzel received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale where he played football, basketball, and tennis for Timothy Dwight College and was a member of Berzelius.  He earned an M.A. (Soviet Studies) and Ph.D. (History) from Harvard.  Dr. Haltzel is the recipient of state decorations from seven European Union countries:  Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Sweden.