Rita Hauser

A self-described Rockefeller Republican, Hauser supported Barack Obama in the 2008 United States presidential election.

Hauser chairs the International Peace Institute and is chair of the advisory board of the International Crisis Group, was elected in 2007 to the board of the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, chairs the American Ditchley Foundation, has served as a director of the RAND Corporation and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and is currently a director of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts after having been a director of the New York Philharmonic Society for more than 20 years. She also serves as an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America.

Hauser served as cochair of "New Yorkers for Nixon" during Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 presidential campaign. She then became the United States representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1969–1972). She also served as a member of the United States delegation to the twenty-fourth UN General Assembly.

In 1954 she received a B.A. from Hunter College in New York, after which she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for graduate work in France, which eventually resulted in receiving a doctorate in political economy from the University of Strasbourg. She attended Harvard Law School for a while, then received a License en droit from the University of Paris (a rarity for an American) in 1958, then later received an LL.B. in 1959 from the New York University School of Law.

Rita Eleanor Hauser (born July 12, 1934 in New York) is an international lawyer known for persuading Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization to renounce violence in 1988. She also served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1969 to 1972. George W. Bush appointed her to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board in 2001, serving through 2004, and she was appointed again by Barack Obama in 2009.