Ronald Dwight Godard (born July 8, 1942) is an American retired diplomat who was a career Foreign Service Officer with the grade of Minister Counselor.
[1] He was close to retiring from the Foreign Service in 2003 when he was assigned to be Diplomat-in-Residence to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
For a year he was recruiting for the Department of State and taught an honors seminar on international affairs.
At the time, Godard was the U.S. senior adviser for Western Hemisphere affairs and he said “Cuban leaders would be "mistaken" if they thought the vote would further efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
He added that normalization of relations will take "years of persistence and dedication on both sides.