Martin Palous is a Czech diplomat and educator and was a former dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia. He served as the Czech Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 and the Czech Republic’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2006 to 2011. Dr. Palous was one of the first signers of Charter 77 and a founder of the Civic Forum. In 2011 and 2012, he was Director of the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague. Today he is President of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York, Senior Fellow at Florida International University in Miami, and President of the International Platform for Human Rights in Cuba.