Rendezvous with Patrick and Diplomacy

Illustrious Alumnus of Sri J’pura Wins the Lifetime Achievement Award in the United States

by Dr. Sunil Nawaratne

The Sri Lanka Foundation in California has selected Prof. Patrick Mendis for its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award among Sri Lankan professionals living overseas. He is among the youngest to receive this honour for his distinguished academic career, award-winning diplomatic service, and philanthropic activities in the United States and Sri Lanka.

Prof. Patrick Mendis is widely known to thousands of alumni and educators for his eponymous annual financial prize at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. In the United States, he has also established scholarships for students at the University of Minnesota and Harvard—two of his other alma maters.

Patrick and I are alumni of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Over the years, we have stayed connected, crossed our paths during my postgraduate studies in Japan, and often got together with our friends and alumni whenever he visited his family in Sri Lanka.

In the late 1970s, Patrick won a highly selective American Field Service (AFS) scholarship to study at Perham High School in Minnesota. Upon graduating with a U.S. diploma, Patrick returned to attend the University of Sri Jayewardenepura where we first met in the early 1980s.

He earned the coveted First Class Honours degree in Bachelor of Science from the Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce. As he completed his secondary education in the United States, Patrick often sought counsel and guidance from his Canadian and American Fulbright professors who visited our university. These visiting professors offered him scholarships for postgraduate studies in Canada and the United States. But Patrick returned to his AFS family in Minnesota, which he proudly considers his “birthplace” in America.

Minnesota is one of the coldest and snowiest among the 50 states; the tropical Sri Lanka by comparison is one-third the size of this beautiful “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Patrick evidently fell in love with “Minnesota Nice,” as he described the generosity of its industrious and gentle people.

Patrick progressed to work at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He later received the Hubert Humphrey fellowship and the Notre Dame scholarship to complete his master’s and doctoral degrees at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the University of Minnesota.

While teaching at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990s, Patrick endowed two annual scholarships at Sri J’pura. These scholarships were later combined into the Dr. Patrick Mendis Prize to reflect his own outstanding achievements in management studies, leadership accomplishments in sports, and numerous contributions to the World University Service as its president in Sri Lanka. Patrick would explain that the annual prize is a fulfilling way to give back and to inspire the next generation of leaders and managers to do things better than he did.

In the subsequent years, I focused on my career in the fields of business management, government service, and higher education in Sri Lanka while Patrick ventured into international diplomacy, teaching, and conducting research at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, and other universities. At Harvard, he finished his mid-career Executive Leadership Programme at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. As a visiting faculty member, he later returned to serve as a Rajawali senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a research associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard.

More importantly, however, Patrick blended his academic pursuits with public service in the United States government, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

While studying in Minnesota, the government of Sri Lanka appointed Patrick to the United Nations as its first Youth Ambassador to represent Sri Lanka at the First UN International Year of the Youth (IYY) in New York. Ambassador Karunasena Kodituwakku, then the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, recommended Patrick to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, then the Minister of Education. For his leadership at the United Nations, the UN Secretary General honored him with the UN Medal for the IYY.

Patrick began his American government service in the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Ronald Reagan administration. Congressman Gerry Connolly, a former Senate colleague and now his congressional representative from Virginia, writes: “Dr. Patrick Mendis is a highly respected foreign policy scholar, an award-winning public servant, and American diplomat. Patrick and I served in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

After government service, he returned to academia. Patrick then served as a distinguished senior fellow and affiliate professor of public and international affairs at the Schar School of Policy and Government at the George Mason University in Virginia. While serving as the Vice President of the Osgood Centre for International Studies and a visiting foreign policy scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, he authored books, published articles, and lectured on UN affairs.

At the U.S. Department of State, he was assigned to serve as the chairman of the interagency policy group on science and technology in the Bill Clinton administration. Under the George Bush administration, the late Secretary of State Colin Powell appointed him to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as its secretariat director to manage the Fulbright, Humphrey, and other international exchange programmes. Patrick also served as an advisor to the United States Delegations to the United Nations.

During the Barack Obama administration, Patrick was appointed as a Commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO at the Department of State. His tenure ended when the Donald Trump administration withdrew from the UN.

United States Senator Chris Van Hollen, who grew up in Sri Lanka but now represents Maryland, describes his friend: “Patrick has contributed years of dedicated service to our country, and has been recognised for his academic achievements, outstanding government career, and important philanthropic work.”

During his service at the Department of State, Patrick also taught MBA courses at the University of Maryland. Through the University of Maryland Global Campus, Patrick previously worked as a military professor in the NATO and the Indo-Pacific Commands of the Pentagon with a range of teaching tours in England, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, South Korea, and Turkey.

After returning to Washington, D.C., Patrick has also worked in various federal agencies in the United States government.

Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, a former presidential candidate, explains her fellow Minnesotan this way: “Dr. Mendis is a respected leader and award-winning public servant, teacher, and diplomat” who has served in “the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Defense, and State.”

Over the years, the University of Minnesota has recognised Patrick with the Alumnus of Notable Achievement (ANA) Award, the Harold Stassen Award for UN Affairs, and the Hubert Humphrey Leadership Award. The Minnesota Magazine described the illustrious American as “a scholar and a diplomat” for his leadership in government service. Patrick was honored with the Benjamin Franklin Award by the U.S. Department of States and the USDA Graduate School

Award for Leadership and Service by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Patrick has worked in—and travelled to—more than 130 countries. His lifetime achievements are yet to come. Patrick is currently serving as a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland as well as a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

Patrick has also lectured at the Sir John Kotelawala Defence University and other Sri Lankan universities in Colombo, Jaffna, Kelaniya, and Sri Jayewardenepura.

As highlighted in this narrative, it is truly a distinct honour to have such an eminent alumnus as a steadfast friend in the United States. His American journey from Sri Lanka has indeed shown us the value of education and the power of diplomacy beyond national boundaries for a better world for all of us.

*Dr. Sunil Nawaratne, an alumnus of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, is the Director-General of the National Institute of Education and a former permanent secretary to the Ministry of Higher Education in Sri Lanka.