Spain’s ESADE Business School has launched a new Centre for Global Economics and Geopolitics and named a top European Union official to serve as its president starting in January.
Javier Solana, the European Union’s former High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, has been appointed president of the new center. Solana, 67, has a doctoral degree in physics and is a tenured professor at Complutense University in Madrid, but he left academia for some time to pursue his political career. He has held several government positions in Spain, including Minister of Education and Science and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and also served as Secretary General of NATO from 1995-99 before moving to the EU. At ESADE he will return to his academic roots, taking on a research and teaching role.
The mission of the new center is to spur analysis and public debate surrounding the role of public institutions and multinationals. Several other ESADE professors from the fields of internationalization, macroeconomics, public policy and leadership will also join the center.
“We hope to set up what will become an international reference for the generation of new ideas essential for the future of global society as a whole,” Solana said in a statement announcing his appointment. He also aims to establish relationships with other international centers focused on similar goals, he added.
In addition to his duties as head of the center, Solana also will teach as part of some of ESADE’s leading international programs. In this capacity he will share his experience and knowledge with ESADE’s executive education participants, MBA students and the school’s large alumni network.
“It will be an honor to work alongside such an international political heavyweight,” ESADE Director General Carlos Losada said in a statement. “We are excited about his leadership of our new research centre and sure that it will yield the pioneering new ideas needed by business and society,” he added.
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