Ambassador Finn is currently Associate Research Scholar in the Liechtenstein Institute of the Woodrow Wilson School of international Affairs and Lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School. From 2005-2008 he was also a lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Prior to this he was the Ertegun Visiting Professor of Turcology at Princeton University from 2003-2005. He served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in more than 20 years, from March 2002 until August 2003. Previously, he had also been the Ertegun Professor at Princeton, after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan, 1998-2001. His other diplomatic postings include Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, Turkey; Lahore, Pakistan; and Zagreb, Croatia. He opened the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 1992. He has received numerous awards from the USG, including two Presidential Meritorious Service Awards and one for heroism.

Ambassador Finn is the author of the book The Early Turkish Novel, which has been published both in English and Turkish. His poems and translations have appeared in the United States, Turkey, France and Pakistan. The University of Texas press published his translation of the Turkish author Nazli Eray’s novel, Orpheus in 2006. Most recently, he co-edited Building State and Security in Afghanistan. (LISD-WWS-2007). Ambassador Finn holds a B.A. in American Literature and European History from St. John’s University, an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from New York University, and an M.A. and Ph. D in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and a Fulbright scholar at Istanbul University. He reads in more than ten languages.