Ambassador Norman Eisen is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, a CNN political commentator, and the chair of the government watchdog group CREW, which he co-founded in 2003. Eisen served from 2009 to 2011 in the White House as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform. Following his White House service, Eisen was the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014.
Before government service, Eisen was a partner in the D.C. law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, where he specialized in litigation and investigations. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. from Brown University, both with honors. Eisen’s book The Last Palace, an account of the struggle between democracy, communism, and fascism over the past century, is forthcoming in September.
