Mary Ann Glendon

Mary Ann Glendon is Professor of Law Emerita at Harvard University and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Her government service includes chairing the U.S. State Department Commission on Unalienable Rights and membership on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She has served the Holy See in several capacities, including as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2003-2013) and as a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Institute of Religious Works (Vatican Bank) (2013-2018). She represented the Holy See at various international conferences, including the 1995 U.N. Women's conference in Beijing, where she headed the Vatican delegation. 

Her books include In the Courts of Three Popes: An American Lawyer and Diplomat in the Last Absolute Monarchy in the West (2024); The Forum and the Tower (2011), a series of biographical essays exploring the relation between political philosophy and politics-in-action; and A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001), a history of the framing of the UDHR.