Fall 2011

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When Jenik Radon ’67 was studying philosophy in Professor Golding’s Contemporary Civilization class, he felt torn between his passion for the subject and his desire to find a more tangible meaning in his life. “I enjoyed the Core tremendously, especially the study of ethics,” Radon says. “But I felt that I had only one question, which philosophy could not answer: ‘Why am I here?’ ”

Jenik Radon ’67 speaking at the World Leaders Forum in 2009.PHOTO: KONSTANTIN TCHERGUEIKO ’10 GSASRadon majored in economics, eventually becoming involved in international corporate law. His practice, Radon & Ishizumi, is based in New York. 

But the age-old question has driven him to help young nations around the world open their markets, build constitutions and gain independence. Radon, an adjunct professor at SIPA, is organizing a major conference on Chinese integration into the world, to be held within the next year in Estonia. He also is helping emerging nations such as Uganda and Malawi develop their extractive industry laws and is active in a nation-branding project in Mexico, where in October he sponsored the Mexican Bicentennial Independence Conference. “Image-building is a part of nation-building,” Radon says. 

“To me, fairness is an issue all the time,” he says. His first activist role was cofounding a relief committee for Afghanistan, when the Soviets invaded in 1979. The Afghanistan Relief Committee, which operated well into the 1990s, considered its primary work raising consciousness, with the goal of helping Afghanistan regain independence. But the group often was met with misunderstanding. At the time, Afghanis were called “rebels,” Radon recalls. “When they were called ‘freedom fighters,’ our work became easier.”

Radon then became involved in Eastern Europe by helping write privatization, foreign investment and commercial laws for countries such as Poland and Estonia, and leading negotiations for an international pipeline in Georgia. He also drafted the constitution that helped bring an end to a decade-long civil war in Nepal in 2006.

Radon seems to have been destined for a global outlook. Born in Berlin, he moved to the United States with his family when he was 5. At Columbia, in addition to studying economics, he did anthropological research in Brazil through a National Science Foundation grant, an experience that he says “opened me up to the whole world.” Radon speaks German as well as English and is keenly aware of his immigrant status. “There is the culture your parents have, and the culture that you live and speak,” he says. “I realized very quickly that one was not right or wrong; they were just different.”

Radon graduated from Stanford Law School in 1971, where he met his late wife, Heidi. They married that year, moved to New York and had a daughter, Kaara ’95. Radon did corporate legal work in the 1970s and founded Radon & Ishizumi in 1981. After presenting a paper on Polish joint ventures in Washington, D.C., in 1980, he was invited to lecture in Poland, where in many places he was the first Westerner officially invited to speak. On the basis of his work, Radon was asked to write the foreign investment laws for Poland in 1986.

As the Estonian independence movement accelerated, Radon advised the government and co-authored the privatization and foreign investment laws that would lead to a free-market economy. He officially raised the American flag at Estonia’s American Embassy, a daring move when Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union.

In the 1990s, Radon worked for Georgia, acting as lead negotiator for a multibillion dollar international pipeline, the BTC, that would run through the country.

The work he is proudest of involves Nepal. In 2006, the country was embroiled in civil war and Radon arranged a major conference at Columbia on the situation. As a condition of peace, the Maoists were demanding a new constitution, and Radon was invited to the country to draft it. He takes special pride in a provision that effectively gave citizenship to everyone born in Nepal. “The net result was that millions of stateless people of Indian heritage became citizens,” he says. The constitution played a key role in ending the civil war. “You’re impacting a nation, a people. It was to be a foundation law.”

In 1990, Radon founded the Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellowship at Columbia, which enables students to intern in Estonia, Georgia, Nepal and Kenya. Radon works closely with these students. Ahmer Ahmad ’96, who worked with the then-president of Estonia as part of the program, says it changed his life. “To be entrusted with such important work, to be a part of Estonia’s transition into a modern, functional democracy, was amazing,” Ahmad says. “I will forever be grateful.”

In recent years, Radon has worked on helping underdeveloped nations use their natural resources without suffering human rights violations from multinational corporations. He has been writing articles outlining core abuses committed by the extractive industry in developing nations.

Radon, who has taught at SIPA part-time since 2002, sees his role as a motivator, empowering students to implement their ideas in developing nations. “Sometimes they have their ideas already, but they’re in the library. You help them get off the ground and move them. I tell my students: ‘You are an ambassador of yourself, your school and your country. Your obligation is not just to do the project, but to leave a legacy so that your project is carried on without you.”

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