Mitch Lerner, professor of history and director of the East Asian Studies Center, was recently elected president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Founded in 1967, SHAFR is the preeminent professional organization for historians of American foreign relations, with almost 1,000 members across the globe. Lerner, who is a faculty fellow at the Mershon Center, has also been a member of the Distinguished Speakers Bureau of the Association for Asian Studies, the associate editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, a fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and the Mary Ball Washington Distinguished Fulbright Chair at University College-Dublin.

He will begin his term as vice-president/president-elect on November 1, 2022, and will ascend to the presidency on November 1, 2023.