Robert Solin Leiken (March 19, 1939 – June 7, 2017) was an American intellectual, political scientist, and historian who worked at several U.S. universities and policy centers.
In Cuernavaca he taught English at a labor union center called CEFESOM and political economy at a research university CIDOC.
Upon returning to the United States in 1980, Leiken became a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The wide ideological variety of these organizations is emblematic of Leiken's effort to resist the tendency in Washington to derive policy from politics rather than investigation and has earned a reputation for patient, concrete and unbiased analysis.
Leiken's October 1984 article in The New Republic entitled "Nicaragua's Untold Stories" criticized the Sandinistas for mismanagement, corruption, and human rights abuses, and political indoctrination.
The turning point came in the fall of 1984, when, after an intense 10 day trip to Nicaragua, Leiken returned "appalled and angry" over conditions there.
Leiken's apparent conversion was seen by the entrenched left as a betrayal and by Reaganites as a vindication of their long held views.
[4] Diana West of the Washington Times added: ...soon after returning from a trip to Nicaragua in 1984 that fundamentally altered his thinking—an intellectual evolution to which President Reagan referred in yesterday's address on aid to the Nicaraguan resistance—Mr.
"[5] Leiken served as the Executive Director of the Presidential Commission on Broadcasting to Cuba under President Bill Clinton.