Ben Rhodes (White House staffer)

Rhodes was born on November 14, 1977, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He is the son of an Episcopal father from Texas and a Jewish mother from New York. Rhodes then attended Rice University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 2000 with majors in English and political science. He then moved back to New York, attending New York University and graduating in 2002 with an MFA in creative writing. His brother, David Rhodes, is a former president of CBS News. == Career ==

In the summer of 1997, Rhodes volunteered with the Rudy Giuliani mayoral campaign. discussing U.S. support for NLD-led government in Myanmar, July 2016 In 2007, Rhodes began working as a speechwriter for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Rhodes wrote Obama's 2009 Cairo speech "A New Beginning." Rhodes was the adviser who counseled Obama to withdraw support from Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, Rhodes supported Israel in the 2012 Israel–Gaza conflict. Rhodes was instrumental in conversations that led to Obama reestablishing the United States' diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been cut off since 1961. The New York Times reported that Rhodes spent "more than a year sneaking off to secret negotiations in Canada and finally at the Vatican" in advance of the official announcement in December 2014. After leaving the Obama administration, Rhodes began working as a commentator. He began contributing to Crooked Media, NBC News, and MSNBC. In 2018, he co-founded National Security Action. In 2018 he criticized Trump administration's involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. He also looked back at the actions of the Obama administration, he wrote of the war in Yemen, "Looking back, I wonder what we might have done differently, particularly if we'd somehow known that Obama was going to be succeeded by a President Trump." After the publication of the article he was criticized for his inaction while working for the Obama administration. In 2018, Random House published Rhodes's memoir, The World as It Is, a behind-the-scenes account of Barack Obama's presidency and a New York Times bestseller. In 2021, Random House published his ''After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made,'' which examines the state of democracy around the world and also a New York Times bestseller. Rhodes has written opinion articles for newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and The Atlantic. Rhodes was featured in the HBO documentary The Final Year, along with John Kerry, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice. The documentary portrays Obama's final year in office, with a focus on his foreign policy team. In the Spring of 2020, Rhodes was a fellow at the USC Center for the Political Future. ==Opinion on Netanyahu government==

Rhodes took a relatively critical stance toward Israel during his experience working in the Obama White House, for which he was nicknamed "Hamas" by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. After leaving the White House, Rhodes made public statements criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for failing to engage in good faith toward a diplomatic resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Rhodes said it had become clear to the Obama administration that the Netanyahu government was not interested in working in earnest toward a peace treaty based on a two-state solution. According to Rhodes, "nevertheless we act like somehow Bibi Netanyahu believed in the two-state solution. We pretended to my shame at times in the Obama administration that he was interested in that. When I don't think he was, ever." In a 2021 podcast discussion with Peter Beinart, Rhodes expressed his concern that the Biden administration was making the same mistake. == Controversies ==

In a controversial profile in The New York Times Magazine, Rhodes was quoted "deriding the D.C. press corps and boasting of how he created an 'echo chamber' to market the administration's foreign policy", including the international nuclear agreement with Iran. The piece resulted in a wave of criticism, with numerous news organizations calling out Rhodes' apparent flippancy and cynicism in "pushing a 'narrative to media to sell the Iran nuclear deal". A blog commentary on the Foreign Policy magazine (which had named Rhodes as one of the top 100 global thinkers in 2015) website, criticized him for the alleged lack of formal education in international relations and "real-world experiences". ==Personal attack==

In 2017, it was alleged that Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube attempted to manufacture incriminating or embarrassing information about Rhodes and his wife, as well as about fellow former National Security Council staffer Colin Kahl, in an apparent effort to undermine supporters of the Iran nuclear deal. Rhodes said of the incident, "This just eviscerates any norm of how governments should operate or treat their predecessors and their families. It crosses a dangerous line." The effort continued well after the Obama administration ended. == Awards and honors ==

In 2011, Rhodes was on Time magazine's "40 Under 40" list of powerful and prominent young professionals. Rhodes was number 13 on Fortune magazine's "40 Under 40" list of the most influential young people in business in 2014. In 2015, Rhodes was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers. == Books ==

• Rhodes, Ben, "An American Reckoning" (review of Philip Taubman and William Taubman, McNamara at War: A New History, Norton, 2025, , 498 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXIII, no. 3 (26 February 2026), pp. 43–45. "The Vietnam War ... betrayed a fatal blind spot within American liberalism, a devaluation of human life itself: the belief that a cohort of enlightened people could manage an empire while casting themselves as democrats. [Robert] McNamara ... mistook strength for wisdom; he experienced power as legitimizing, even righteous." (p. 45.) ==Personal life==

Rhodes is married to Ann Norris, who was chief foreign policy adviser to former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. They have two daughters. == References ==