[1] He also held the chair of Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.[2] Lake is the grandson of Kirsopp Lake, a member of the Church of England clergy who moved to the United States from Oxford, England, in 1914, to teach New Testament studies at Harvard.

Lake studied international economics at Trinity College, Cambridge for two years and later received a PhD from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1974 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Caution and concern: the making of American policy toward South Africa, 1946-1971.

Although this did not initially end their companionship, they rarely spoke, and by the time Lake became National Security Advisor, their friendship was over.

In 1969, he accompanied National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on his first secret meeting with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris.

In 1984, he moved to Mount Holyoke College, where he taught courses on the Vietnam War, Third World revolutions, and American foreign policy.

Among his protegees at Mount Holyoke was his student research assistant Mona Sutphen who would later serve in the Barack Obama White House as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, Lake advocated a policy of "enlargement" of the number free market democracies.

[8] When Clinton decided in 1994 to allow Iran to arm the Bosnian army, Lake admitted he made a mistake when he didn't push to inform Congress of the decision.

[citation needed] It has also been reported that the failure of his nomination was related to his decision to withdraw support at the last minute for an Iraqi coup that might have removed Saddam Hussein without U.S.

He played key roles in the establishment of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the college, where he also served on the advisory board.

He ultimately converted to Judaism in 2005, before marrying Julie T. Katzman, currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Inter-American Development Bank.

He credits Katzman's religious faith as the impetus responsible for his decision to investigate his attraction to Judaism more fully, and began studying with former Navy Chaplain Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff (who was serving with him on the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs) for a full year before his conversion.

The second time was two years later, when a 1999 Washington Post story described a new release of Watergate tapes of conversations between President Richard Nixon and H.R.