Ambassador of the United States of America to the Russian Federation Michael McFaul met with participants of international exchange programs financed by the US State Department and US Educational Funds as well as with students from the USA.
Ambassador McFaul commented that his visit to Kazan was originally dedicated to the opening of Universiade Games but he could not miss the opportunity of such a meeting at Kazan University. He said he was pleasantly surprised at how the capital of Tatarstan has changed and also encouraged the further promotion of Tatarstan in the West.
Biography: Ambassador McFaul was nominated by President Barack Obama on September 14, 2011, and confirmed by the Senate on December 17, 2011. He was sworn in as the United States Ambassador to the Russian Federation on January 10, 2012.
Prior to becoming Ambassador, he served for three years as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.
Michael McFaul is a professor of political science at Stanford University. At Stanford, he is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. He is currently on leave from Stanford. Before joining the Obama administration, McFaul served as Deputy Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law (CDDRL). He was also a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations in 1991. (http://moscow.usembassy.gov/ambassador.html)