Kurtzer joined the
United States Department of State and was serving as a junior officer at the American Embassy in
Cairo when
Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. He served in Israel between the years of 1982 and 1986, then became Deputy Director of the State Department's Egypt desk in Washington, D.C. He later served on the
Policy Planning Staff, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. When asked why he was drawn to the Middle East, he later replied: "The work never seems to be finished in this region. It is not a place where tuxedos and cocktail parties characterize diplomacy." Kurtzer joined the staff of Secretary of State
James Baker. He helped write Baker's noteworthy speech to
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in May 1989. The speech was originally drafted by
Harvey Sicherman, who used uncontroversial pro-Israel language in his text. Kurtzer's revisions included an attention-getting line that encouraged Israel and its supporters to abandon the
Greater Israel idea. According to
Aaron David Miller, he and Kurtzer wrote short memos for Baker on issues at hand, rather than longer, strategic papers. Kurtzer was also part of the Clinton administration's team of advisers on the Arab–Israeli peace process. According to Miller, Kurtzer left in 1994 because he "felt shut out by" the Special Middle East Envoy,
Dennis Ross. In 2006, he retired from the State Department and the U.S. Foreign Service with the rank of Career-Minister and assumed a chair in Middle East policy studies at the School of Public and International Affairs at
Princeton University. He co-chaired, with Scott Lasensky, the Study Group on Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, a project supported by the
United States Institute of Peace. They published their recommendations in a 2008 book. In 2007, Kurtzer served as the commissioner of the
Israel Baseball League, a league discontinued after
a single season. In 2008, he endorsed then-Senator
Barack Obama's successful candidacy for the presidency. Kurtzer,
James Steinberg, and Dennis Ross were among the principal authors of Obama's address on the Middle East to
AIPAC in June 2008, which was viewed as the Democratic nominee's most expansive on international affairs. ==See also==