Mortimer B. Zuckerman served as Chairman of the Conference from June 2001 through May 2003.

Mr. Zuckerman is the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report and the Chairman and Publisher of the New York Daily News.  He is also the co-founder and Executive Chairman Boston Properties Inc. and was a regular commentator on The McLaughlin Group.

He is a trustee of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Vice Chair of the International Peace Institute.  He is the Vice Chairman of The Fund for Public Schools and serves as a Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Security Task Force.  He is a sponsor of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a former Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a former lecturer of City and Regional Planning at Yale University, a past president of the Board of Trustees of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, a member of the Trilateral Commission, and the former Chairman of the Principal’s International Advisory Board of McGill University. He is a former Chairman of the Board of Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum, and served as President of the America-Israel Friendship League.

Mr. Zuckerman is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1957 with first class honors, a degree in law in 1961 and an honorary LLD in 2011. He received an MBA with distinction from the Wharton Graduate School, University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and an LLM from Harvard University in 1962.

He has received honorary degrees from Colby College, Southampton College, Hebrew College, Berkeley College, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an honorary Doctorate of Laws from McGill University. Mr. Zuckerman was awarded the Commandeur De L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall, the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architecture in New York, the Sy Syms Humanitarian award from Yeshiva University and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Canadian government.