Eric Schwartz is professor of public affairs at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In August 2022, he completed a five year tenure as president of Refugees International.

Eric has had a nearly four-decade career in public life, focused primarily on humanitarian and human rights issues.

Between 2011 and 2017, he served as dean of the Humphrey School. Prior to that, between 2009 and 2011, he was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. As Assistant Secretary, he strengthened the State Department’s humanitarian advocacy around the world and initiated and implemented critical enhancements to the U.S. refugee resettlement program. He was the senior human rights and humanitarian official at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He also served as a Commissioner and Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as UN Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery after the 2004 Asian Tsunami; as Washington Director of Asia Watch (now the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch); and as Staff Consultant to the House of  Representatives Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, among other positions at the United Nations and in the non-governmental sector.

Eric holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, where he was a recipient of a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholarship for commitment to public service through law. He also earned a Master of Public Affairs degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, as a Political Science major at the State University of New York at Binghamton.