July 21, 2011

Ricardo Luna Named a Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Ricardo V. Luna, a professor and former ambassador from Peru, as a distinguished visiting scholar at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

While at the Kluge Center, from July 2011 to January 2012, Luna will study hemispheric political and cultural links, tracing the evolution of contrasting and converging views on the elusive yet persistent "inter-American ideal" in South and North America from the 19th century to the present.

Luna served as Peru’s ambassador to the United States from 1992 to 1999. He participated in peace talks that in 1998 resulted in an agreement ending decades-long friction and periodic conflicts between Peru and Ecuador. He helped reduce bilateral debt with the United States while also focusing on drug-trafficking issues, human rights and democratic consolidation.

Previously, as Minister of the Permanent Mission of Peru to the United Nations from 1989-1992, he helped reduce remaining regional crises as the Cold War came to an end.

Luna was the Peruvian ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, London, from 2006 to 2010. From 2001 to 2006, Luna taught international relations at Brown, Columbia, Tufts, Harvard and Princeton universities and the University of San Martín de Porres in Lima, focusing on United States-Latin American relations and Andean governance.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1962, earned a Master of International Affairs degree at Columbia University in 1964 and entered the diplomatic service of Peru in 1966.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources, and to interact with policymakers in Washington. For further information on the Kluge Center, visit www.loc.gov/kluge/.

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PR 11-137
07/21/11
ISSN 0731-3527

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