Scholars: John Kerry is the least effective Secretary of State

(Image credit: Stefan Wermuth - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

published 5 February 2015

A survey on foreign-policy research asked an elite audience of 1,615 international relations scholars from more than 1,300 U.S. colleges, "Who was the most effective U.S. secretary of state of the past 50 years?"

Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry A. Kissinger is ranked the most effective (32.21 percent). James Baker, who served under George H.W. Bush and helped construct the 34-national alliance that fought along the U.S. in the Gulf War, comes in next (17.71 percent).

Hillary Clinton manages to squeeze into the top-five, tying with Madeleine Albright (8.7 percent), while Colin Powell (1.07 percent) and Condoleezza Rice (0.46 percent) fall toward the bottom. And then there’s John Kerry. The current SoS is ranked last with 0.31 percent of the vote — the same percentage as Lawrence Eagleburger who served for little more than a year under Bush Senior and is ranked, for some reason, above Kerry.

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Kerry has been Secretary of State for only two years, so perhaps he'll impress these academics and beat out that Eagleburger yet.

Curiously, the second ranking (18.32 percent) is unceremoniously, "Don't know" — the "my dog ate my homework" equivalent for a group of experts in the field of international relations.

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Lauren Hansen produces The Weekâ€™s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.