Jean-David Levitte, French Ambassador to the United States, will deliver a lecture on “The United States and France in a World Transformed,” at noon March 13 in the Uncas A. Whitaker Hall auditorium on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.
Levitte will be in St. Louis for the festivities surrounding the bicentennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. In addition to speaking at the University, Levitte will address The Round Table of St. Louis, visit the Alliance Francaise School and attend the Bicentennial Ball, and the Three Flags Commemoration Ceremony at the Arch, marking the bicentennial of the transfer of the upper Louisiana Territory.
Jean-David Levitte
Levitte has had a distinguished and outstanding career in the French foreign service, serving on the staff of two French presidents and holding various senior positions in the French foreign service.
Born in 1946 in the south of France, Levitte earned a law degree and is a graduate of Sciences-Po (the renowned Institute for Political Science in Paris) and of the National School of Oriental Languages, where he studied Chinese and Indonesian.
A few months after his election in 1974, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing asked Levitte to work on his staff at the Elysee Palace, where he stayed from 1975-1981.
Levitte was then assigned to his first position in the United States as Second Counselor at the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York.
In 1988, Levitte was designated to his first position as Ambassador and served as the French Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva from 1988-1990.
After the presidential elections in 1995, President Jacques Chirac asked Levitte to be his Senior Diplomatic Adviser. He served in that position from 1995-2000.
Chirac appointed Levitte as French Permanent Representative to the United Nations in 2000, which he held until becoming Ambassador to the United States.
The lecture is free and open to the public, and coffee and light refreshments will be served at 11:30 a.m.