Richard Newton Gardner served as the United States Ambassador to Spain and the United States Ambassador to Italy.
Education
Gardner attended Harvard, where he received an Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1948. He attended Yale Law School, where he was the Note Editor for the Yale Law Journal. After graduating from Yale in 1951, Gardner was a Rhodes Scholar, and received his Doctorate in economics from Oxford University in 1954.
Career
He is currently a professor emeritus of law at Columbia Law School. Gardner practiced law for three years in New York after finishing his doctorate at Oxford. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1957.
He taught at Columbia until his retirement in 2012.
Gardner was appointed by President Kennedy as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in 1961, a position he held until 1965, when he was appointed by President Johnson as a senior adviser to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He served in various advisory positions in the United Nations
In 1977, he was appointed by President Carter as United States. Ambassador to Italy, a position he held until 1981. President Clinton appointed Gardner as United States. Ambassador to Spain, from 1993 to 1997.
In 2000, he was a United States. Public Delegate to the 55th United Nations General Assembly.
Membership
After a year with the United Nations, he served as a member of the President"s Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy from 1970 to 1971. He was a member of the Trilateral Commission from 1974 to 2005.