Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Ambassador (ret.) Richard E. Hoagland is currently Senior Adviser and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Caspian Policy Center in Washington, DC, as well as the Executive Director of their Security and Policy Program.  Before his 2015 formal retirement from the State Department after 30 years of service, he was U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, October 2013-August 2015.  Before returning to Washington in September 2013, he had spent a decade in South and Central Asia.  He was U.S. Deputy Ambassador and Charge d’affaires to Pakistan (2011-2013), U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan (2008-2011), and U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan (2003-2006).  He also served as U.S. Charge d'affaires to Turkmenistan (2007-2008).  Prior to his diplomatic assignments in South and Central Asia, Ambassador Hoagland was Director of the State Department’s Office of Caucasus and Central Asian Affairs (2001-2003).  In that position, he wrote and negotiated four of the key bilateral documents defining the Central Asian states’ enhanced relationship with the United States in the aftermath of 9/11.  His earlier foreign assignments included Russia where he was Press Spokesman for the U.S. Embassy (1995-1998).  During the course of his career, he received multiple Presidential Performance Awards, State Department Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards, as well as the rarely-bestowed Distinguished Honor Award.

Ambassador Hoagland is an elected member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.  He has spoken at university seminars and international conferences, including at the Kennedy School of Harvard University.  In Summer 2016, he led U.S.-Russian military coordination for the Cessation of Hostilities in Syria for three months from the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan (June-August 2016).  January-September 2017, he was the interim U.S. Co-Chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe/OSCE’s Minsk Group for Nagorno-Karabakh.  In 2018 and 2019, he led the New York Times Silk Road Journey as the subject-matter expert. 

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ambassador Hoagland completed his graduate degrees at the University of Virginia and earned a certificate in French from the University of Grenoble, France.  Before joining the Foreign Service in 1985, Ambassador Hoagland taught English as a foreign language in the then-Zaire (1974-1976) and African literature at the University of Virginia's Carter-Woodson Institute of African and Afro-American Studies.