Dr Jef McAllister, Alumni Observer, 1979 Marshall Scholar
He served as Chief of TIME Magazine's London Bureau from 1999 to 2007. He was responsible for covering the U.K. and Ireland for Time and Time International, and for writing widely about Europe and its relations with the rest of the world.
He previously served as Deputy Bureau Chief in TIME's Washington Bureau, where he managed the work of 15 correspondents covering the U.S. capital.
Between 1995 and 1997 he was TIME's White House Correspondent, covering foreign and domestic policies and the internal politics of the Clinton Administration. He reported extensively on the 1996 election campaign and traveled regularly with the President.
In his previous assignment as Diplomatic Correspondent, which began in 1994, McAllister accompanied Secretaries of State James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger and Warren Christopher on their foreign travels, and contributed to or wrote more than 40 cover stories on diplomacy.
McAllister graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a concentration in American diplomatic history, afterwards working in Manila as a Luce Scholar for an Asian news service, travelling and writing extensively in Southeast Asia. As a Marshall Scholar he earned a D.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford, writing a thesis about postwar British policy to promote technical innovation and industrial competitiveness. While there he also wrote the memoirs of U. Alexis Johnson, a U.S. Ambassador to Japan and Under Secretary of State. From Oxford, McAllister went to law school at Yale, clerked for a federal judge and worked as a corporate lawyer in New York.
After returning to Washington D.C. in 1989 to cover the State Department for TIME, McAllister wrote about Gulf War diplomacy, Middle East peace talks, tensions over North Korea's nuclear program, and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China. He also wrote profiles of President Clinton's principal foreign policy advisors, about the inside diplomacy of several US-China summits, the pros and cons of trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein and Clinton's many legal and political difficulties arising out of the Monica Lewinsky matter.
In London he wrote about the Northern Ireland peace process, Britain and the euro, changing attitudes towards drugs in Europe and the Iraq war. He is the author of cover stories on Tony Blair, the 2001 and 2005 British general elections, EU expansion, European anti-Americanism, Muslims in Europe, the Beslan seige, terrorist bombings in London, the 2006 G-8 summit and the BBC. He travelled regularly with Tony Blair and wrote frequently about US-UK relations. He has extensive TV and radio experience, including BBC 24, BBC World, Hardtalk, ITN, Breakfast with Frost, Newsnight, GMTV, CNN, World at One, Woman's Hour, Radio 5 Live and the World Service. He has participated in four annual meetings of the World Economic Forum.
In 2006 he won the Foreign Press Association's award for Best Story by a Foreign Correspondent, for his cover story on how Queen Elizabeth has modernized the monarchy. McAllister is past president of the Association of American Correspondents in London, and a member of Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations.
