Alfredo Toro Hardy

Education

Alfredo Toro Hardy graduated with a Law degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas in 1973. Between 1973 and 1975 he made postgraduate studies in France under a scholarship of the French Government. He acquired a diploma in diplomatic studies from the Institut International d'Administration Publique and a diploma in comparative law from Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, 1975. He received his M.S. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1977 and his Master of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. He took a course on international negotiations from Harvard University in 1984.

Academic career

He was a Member of the Advising Committee of the Diplomatic Academy of London (2004–2008). A Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University (1986–1987) and at the School of International Affairs of the University of Brasilia (1995–1996), he served as well as on-line Professor at the Centre for Social Economy of the University of Barcelona (2004–2005). He has been a Fulbright Scholar (1986–1987) and a Bellagio Center Resident Scholar (September, 2011). He was a Member of the Nominations Committee of the Bellagio Center Policy Fellows Program for the period 2014-2016. Toro Hardy was elected by the Council of Faculties of the University of Cambridge as Simón Bolívar Chair Professor for Latin American Studies for the period 2006-2007, but had to decline due to his diplomatic career (holders of this prestigious chair have included leading Latin American figures such as Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Fuentes or Celso Furtado). Associate Professor at the Simón Bolívar University from which he retired in 1992, he also taught at the Central University of Venezuela. Alfredo Toro Hardy was the Director of the Centre for North American Studies and the Coordinator of the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies at the Simón Bolívar University from 1989 to 1992. He was the Director of the "Pedro Gual" Diplomatic Academy of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1992 to 1994. He remains an active lecturer on international affairs, having been invited as speaker by top universities and think tanks, including Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, University College London, Harvard, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Council on Foreign Relations or Chatham House, while participating in several international seminars. He is a member of the Iberian American Network of Sinologists and has integrated the academic councils of several electronic symposia on China organized by the Observatorio de la Política China (Spain) and the China Center for Contemporary World Studies (China)[1]. Toro Hardy has also been a member of Chatham House, Canning House and the Windsor Energy Group, among other similar institutions. Both the University of Pennsylvania and the Fulbright Program have included him in its "Notables List".

Publications

He has authored nineteen books and co-authored fifteen, most of which on international affairs. He has also published numerous papers in academic journals, including the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. His book El Desafío Venezolano: ¿Cómo Influir las Decisiones Políticas Estadounidenses? pioneered within Latin America the study of the United States institutional permeability as a mean by the countries of that region to influence in their own benefit Washington's decision making process [2]. This work was originally published in 1988 by the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies of the Simon Bolivar University with a foreword by Miguel Angel Burelli Rivas, Director of the aforementioned institution. The book had subsequent updated editions in 1991 and 2005. His book The Age of Villages, with a foreword by Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Director of Chatham House, won the Latino Book Award in the category of contemporary history/political sciences at the BookExpo America celebrated in Chicago in 2003. His book Hegemonía e Imperio, with a foreword by British historian Robert Harvey, won the same prize at the same category at the BookExpo America celebrated in Los Angeles in 2008. In between the latter two books he published in 2004 ¿Tiene Futuro América Latina? with a foreword by Rubens Ricupero, Secretary General of the UNCTAD. In 2013 World Scientific published Toro Hardy's book The World Turned Upside Down: The Complex Partnership Between China and Latin America under its Series on Contemporary China. The forewords of this work were written by Geoffrey Hawthorn, Emeritus Professor on International Politics at the University of Cambridge and L. Enrique García, President and CEO of CAF - Development Bank of Latin America. In an extensive bibliographycal selection on South America, LibraryThing choose The World Turned Upside Down as one of the nine basic background readings to understand that region [3]. In 2017, World Scientific published yet another book of his: Understanding Latin America: A Decoding Guide. The forewords of the latter were written by Francisco Rojas Aravena, Rector of the United Nations University for Peace and Tommy Koh, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Centre for International Law of the National University of Singapore.

Toro Hardy's books have been endorsed by Kishore Mahbubani, Bernardo Kliksberg, Richard Gott, Zheng Yongnian, Moises Naim, James Dunkerley, Parag Khanna, Ramón J. Velásquez, Rafael Caldera or Jorge Alberto Lozoya, among other important figures. On the same token they have been reviewed or commented by international media and academic journals such as Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, CNBC, Americas Quarterly, BBC, RT, Le Monde Diplomatique, Global-is-Asian or The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies. Alfredo Toro Hardy is a senior weekly columnist at Venezuela's leading newspaper El Universal, where he has been writing since 1992. Previously he was a weekly columnist at El Diario de Caracas for over a decade. His articles have also been published by some of the major newspapers and magazines from Latin America and Spain and they are customarily reproduced by blogs of different tendencies. He regularly contributes with the publications of IGADI, and frequently with those of Casa Asia, two of Spain's top-ten think tanks which specialize on international affairs. His brother Jose Toro Hardy is also a well known Venezuelan author with several published books on economics.

Diplomatic career

Jointly with his academic background Alfredo Toro Hardy is also a seasoned practitioner of international affairs who has been appointed to senior diplomatic positions. As such he is part of the small group of Latin Americans that has excelled in both aspects of this discipline. He began his career in 1976 as Joint Legal Counsel of the Foreign Trade Institute of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and retired in 2017. Among his postings were the following: