S. Frederick Starr

Journalist Ken Silverstein has dubbed Starr "The Professor of Repression" due to his support forcorrupt despotic regimes in the Caspian region. Similarly, a book on the 2008 Georgian-Russian war co-edited by Starr was criticized for lack of impartiality.

Starr has advised three U.S. presidents on Russian/Eurasian affairs and chaired an external advisory panel on U.S. government-sponsored research on the region, organized and co-authored the first comprehensive strategic assessment of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1999. He joined the American Foreign Policy Council as a Distinguished Fellow for Eurasia in January 2017.

Starr served as the 12th president of Oberlin College from 1983 to 1994. Despite increasing minority hiring, Starr's presidency contained clashes with students over such issues as divestment from South Africa and the dismissal of a campus minister, as well as his desire to turn Oberlin into "Harvard of the Midwest." After a clash with students on the front lawn of his home in April 1990, Starr took a leave of absence as president from July 1991–February 1992. He resigned in March 1993, effective to June of that year. After leaving Oberlin, he was president of the Aspen Institute from 1994–1996.

Starr is a jazz clarinetist. In 1980, he co-founded the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble while at Tulane. The ensemble is dedicated "to preserving the raucous pre-1930 jazz of New Orleans." The band has performed across the United States, France, and the former Soviet Union. In March 1982, the group gave the Doubleday Lecture at the Smithsonian Institution. It also made national television appearances in Italy, Japan and Sweden. Jazz historian Al Rose once called it "the most authentic band on the scene today". The Ensemble's albums include Alive and Well (1981), Uptown Jazz (1984) and Hot & Sweet: Sounds of Lost New Orleans (1986).

He began work as an archaeologist in Turkey and in 1974 started the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, which opened U.S. research contact with Central Asia. He served as vice president of Tulane University from 1979–1982, as well as its vice provost from 1980–1981.

Stephen Frederick Starr (born March 24, 1940) is an American expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs, a musician, and a former president of Oberlin College.

He was born on March 24, 1940. Among North American archaeologists, he is known for his survey of archaeological sites throughout Hamilton County, Ohio. In 1958, the results of his exploration of a prehistoric Native American mound were published by The Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, and the results of his countywide survey were published by the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History in 1960. Starr earned a bachelor of arts degree at Yale University in 1962. While there, he was a member of the social and literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall.