Fiona Hill | |
|---|---|
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| Chancellor of Durham University | |
| Assumed office 29 June 2023 | |
| Vice-Chancellor | |
| Preceded by | Sir Thomas Allen |
| Senior Director forEurope andRussia on theUnited States National Security Council | |
| In office April 4, 2017 – July 19, 2019 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Celeste Wallander |
| Succeeded by | Tim Morrison |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1965-10-01)October 1, 1965 (age 60) Bishop Auckland,County Durham, England |
| Citizenship |
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| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Alma mater | |
Fiona HillCMG (born 1 October 1965) is a British-American academic, foreign affairs advisor and author, who since 2023 has served asChancellor ofDurham University.[1]
Appointed a defence adviser uponLabour's election to Government in July 2024,[2] Hill was formerly an official at theU.S. National Security Council, specializing in Russian and European affairs. She was a witness in the November 2019 House hearings regarding the impeachment inquiry during thefirst impeachment of Donald Trump.[3]
Hill read Russian at theUniversity of St Andrews (graduatingMA), then pursuedpostgraduate studies in History atHarvard University (taking aPhD in 1998),[3] before being elected aSenior Fellow at theBrookings Institution in Washington.[4]
Hill was born in 1965 atBishop Auckland,County Durham, inNorth East England, a daughter of acoal miner, Alfred Hill, and amidwife, June Murray.[5][6] Her father died in 2012; her mother still lives in Bishop Auckland.[7] In the 1960s, as many of thelocal coal mines were closing, her father wanted to emigrate to find work in the mines ofPennsylvania orWest Virginia, but his mother's poor health required him to stay in England.[8] He subsequently worked as a porter in a hospital.[6]
Hill's family struggled financially. June sewed clothes for her daughters and at the age of 13, Fiona began working at odd jobs, including washing cars and working as a waitress at a local hotel.[7] She and her sister attendedBishop Barrington School, a localcomprehensive school. In 2017, she recalled applying for theUniversity of Oxford: "I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene fromBilly Elliot: people were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life."
She then read history and studiedRussian at theUniversity of St. Andrews inScotland, where she obtained anMA degree in 1985.[9][7] She has said the manager of theRoyal and Ancient Golf Club threatened to blacklist her when she reported being sexually assaulted while waitressing during her student days in St Andrews.[10]
In 1987, she was an exchange student in theSoviet Union, where, while interning forNBC News as atranslator, she witnessed the signing of theIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty byRonald Reagan andMikhail Gorbachev.[7] An American professor encouraged Hill to apply for a graduate program in the United States.[8] She later wrote about her negative experience inThe Siberian Curse: "I noticed that many aspects of British (and, by relation, American) culture were surprisingly, even unexpectedly similar, and that the Russians and the West had a good deal in common. Before long, other aspects of the Soviet and Russian [...] mentalities and cultures reared their heads, and these gaps seemed larger and more consuming than any novel or textbook could transmit". Continuing in another passage, she writes: "Whether or not these gaps can be effectively bridged or, at least, mitigated will remain the guiding question for this field of study for decades to come."[11]
AtHarvard University, she graduated with anA.M. degree in Russian and Modern History in 1991, and aPh.D. in History in 1998 underRichard Pipes,Akira Iriye, andRoman Szporluk.[9] While at Harvard, Hill was aFrank Knox Fellow. Her doctoral thesis wasIn search of great Russia: elites, ideas, power, the state, and the pre-revolutionary past in the new Russia, 1991–1996.[12]
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From 1991 to 1999, Hill worked in the research department at theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government atHarvard University. In 1992, she served as coordinator for a "Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations" there and, from 1993 to 1994, she was director of the Ethnic Conflict Project.[13]
In 1999, Hill was associate director of Harvard University's Strengthening Democratic Institutions project.[14][15] She served as director of Strategic Planning for the Eurasia Foundation from 1999 to 2000.[13]
Hill was anintelligence analyst underPresidentsGeorge W. Bush andBarack Obama from 2006 to 2009 with theNational Intelligence Council as an analyst ofRussia andEurasia.
Hill is a member of theCouncil on Foreign Relations and the board of trustees of theEurasia Foundation.[9]
At the Brookings Institution, Hill worked closely withIgor Danchenko. In 2010, Danchenko, Hill and Erica Downs[16] co-authored a paper titled "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Realities of a Rising China and Implications for Russia's Energy Ambitions".[17] Hill introduced Danchenko toChristopher Steele and to U.S.-basedpublic relationsexecutive Charles Dolan Jr.,[18] who would later become one of Danchenko's sources for theTrump–Russia dossier.[19][20]
In 2017, Hill took a leave of absence from theBrookings Institution, where she was director for the Center on the United States and Europe, while also on theNational Security Council.
Hill was appointed, in the first quarter of 2017, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs onPresidentTrump'sNational Security Councilstaff.[21][9][22][23]
Hill had been due to leave the White House to return to Brookings in April 2019. She developed a close working relationship withNational Security AdvisorJohn Bolton, and at Bolton's request, Hill agreed to stay on until mid-July, after whichTim Morrison would replace her.[6] As planned, Hill left the White House on July 15, ten days before theTrump–Zelenskyy telephone call.
Subsequently, Hill has spoken of the difficulty of maintaining a consistent U.S.-Russia policy under President Trump,[24] a result of the clash of her "hawkish" view on Russia and Trump's intermittently warm and welcoming approach, and of the difficulty of ascertaining what Trump and Putin discussed in private meetings.[6][25] Hill believed that Trump idolized Putin and fell into a trap he set at theHelsinki meeting.[26]
| External videos | |
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 Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019,C-SPAN |
| Trump–Ukraine scandal |
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.jpg) A request by U.S. presidentDonald Trump (right) to Ukrainian presidentVolodymyr Zelenskyy (left) to investigateJoe Biden andhis son sparked the scandal. |
| Events |
| People |
Justice Department |
Defense Department |
National Security Council |
Intelligence |
Surrogates |
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| Conspiracy theories |
On October 14, 2019, responding to asubpoena, Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours before a committee of theUnited States Congress as part of theimpeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump during his first impeachment.[27][28][29] Some Republicans questioned the credibility of her testimony, includingConnie Mack IV, who described Hill as a "George Soros mole infiltrating the national-security apparatus".[6]
She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019.[30] While being questioned bySteve Castor, the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented onGordon Sondland's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said. "Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged."[31][32]
In response to a question from that committee's chairman,Rep.Adam Schiff, Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency... The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to putwhoever became the president — by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale — under a cloud."[33]
In her post-White House career, Hill returned to academia. With four other Russia experts,Jon Huntsman Jr. (former Republican Governor and Trump's Ambassador to Russia),Robert Legvold (a retired Professor in International Relations),Rose Gottemoeller (professor and former Deputy Secretary-General of NATO), andThomas R. Pickering (retired diplomat and Clinton's Ambassador to Russia), she wrote an op-ed inPolitico Magazine wherein they state that, although Russia is and will likely remain greatly disharmonious with Western Europe and North America, it is in the security interests of the United States to seek co-operation where possible.[34]
Hill's views on Russia could be characterized by increasing pessimism on co-operation with the United States, as she expressed fear that even Russia's foremost oppositional politician, the now-deceasedAlexei Navalny, employed populism and had a history of engaging nationalism. When asked if such statements could be considered "russophobic", Hill responded that "people may think what they will" and that "it's foolish to disregard objective truths" in service of political etiquette.[35]
Among many analysts sought for their assessment of theJanuary 6 assault on the Capitol in 2021, Hill stated toThe Daily Beast, "The President was trying to stage a coup. There was little chance of it happening, but there was enough chance that the former Defense Secretaries had to put out that letter,[36] which was the final nail through that effort. They prevented the military from being involved in any coup attempt. But instead, Trump tried to incite it himself, [t]his could have turned into a full-blown coup had he had any of those key institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn't succeed doesn't mean it wasn't real."[37] On January 11, 2021, an opinion authored by Hill explicated the basis for her assessment of the attempted coup that precipitated thesecond impeachment of Donald Trump.[38]
October 2021 saw the release of Hill's bookThere Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century,[39] published byHoughton Mifflin Harcourt.NPR described the book as "part memoir, part history tome, and part policy prescription".[40]
In an October 2021 interview, while recounting her tenure atthe White House, Hill drew several parallels between Trump and Putin, noting that both leaders had displayed a penchant for personal power, public performance, and used public nostalgia to gain support.[41] Trump for his part described her as "adeep state stiff with a nice accent".[42]
During an interview byThe New York Times on April 11, 2022, Hill was asked about the motivation for the January 6 rally and provoking the assault on the Capitol. She responded that it was "Trump pulling a Putin" in that he was attempting to remain in office similarly to Putin's having extended his term, because of Trump's yearning "to stay in power like the strongmen he admired".[43][44]
She succeededSir Thomas Allen asChancellor ofDurham University in June 2023.[45][46]
She was elected to a six-year term on theHarvard Board of Overseers in 2023.[47] Hill was appointed aCompanion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the2024 New Year Honours for "services to international relations".[48]
On March 28, 2025, Hill's security clearance was revoked by Director of National Intelligence,Tulsi Gabbard.[49]
On February 28, 2022, during theRussian invasion of Ukraine, Hill was asked byPolitico's senior editor Maura Reynolds if she thoughtVladimir Putin would use Russia'snuclear weapons and responded by saying, "Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones." She stated, "Every time you think, 'No, [Putin] wouldn't, would he?' Well, yes, he would." Hill also stated that she believes thatWorld War III is in progress and that the invasion of Ukraine exemplifies that.[50]
In a later interview withPolitico, Hill said thewar is the third great power conflict in Europe in a little over a century, saying "it's the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before."[51]
Hill was appointed a Defence Advisor toHMG following the2024 United Kingdom general election, and is one of three external reviewers leading itsStrategic Defence Review, withGeneral Sir Richard Barrons andLord Robertson of Port Ellen.[3][52]
Hill met her husband, Kenneth Alvin Keen (born 1966),[53] atCabot House while agraduate student atHarvard.[54] They have a daughter.[55] Hill became a U.S. citizen in 2002.[56]
Hill's books include:
| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Chancellor ofDurham University 2023 – present | Incumbent |
