David J. Kramer was born in Malden, Massachusetts in December 1964. He grew up in Middleborough, Massachusetts where he studied Russian in high school. He was educated at Tufts University, receiving his B.A. in Soviet Studies and Political Science in 1986. His advisor there was Sally Terry. Kramer then went on to get his M.A. in Soviet Studies in 1988 at Harvard University. In 1983 Kramer and his parents traveled to the Soviet Union to meet a relative who was still living in Latvia. He continued to make trips back to Latvia to visit family starting in 1992. After university, Kramer was a Lecturer in Russian Studies at Clark University, a Teaching Fellow for Adam Ulam at Harvard University, and a consultant for Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was an analyst for The Christian Science Monitor Network. In 1990 Kramer, his brother Mark Kramer, Nicholas Daniloff, Natalie Rumer, and other associates from the Russian Research Center at Harvard opened a consulting business called the Cambridge East-West Consulting Group Inc.. The business did not last long, however. Kramer moved to Washington, D.C., and began working at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for Stephen Sestanovich in 1993, on Ulam's recommendation. He followed Sestanovich to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, becoming Associate Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program there, and setting up the Carnegie Moscow Center. He worked briefly as a Senior Fellow at the Project for the New American Century, before joining the United States Department of State as Executive Director of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy in April 2000. He next served as Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Global AffairsPaula Dobriansky, from June 2001 to October 2003. Kramer then became a professional staff member for the Policy Planning Staff. From July 2005 to March 2008, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Dan Fried. While there Kramer worked on issues related to Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, and nonproliferation. In 2008, President of the United States George W. Bush nominated Kramer as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and, after Senate confirmation, he held this office from March 21, 2008 to January 20, 2009. While there he led the resumption of the human rights dialogue with the Chinese, traveling to Beijing in May 2008. He spent much of his time at this post traveling to places like Hanoi, Vietnam, twice to Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, among others. Kramer left his position at the State Department during the transition in January 2009, and became a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He went on to become executive director of Freedom House on October 4, 2010. On June 18, 2014 Freedom House announced that Kramer planned to resign that fall. On October 1, 2014 Freedom House announced that Mark P. Lagon would replace him in 2015. In November 2014, Kramer became the Senior Director for Human Rights and Human Freedom at the McCain Institute. In February 2013, Kramer caused controversy at the bicentennial North American Invitational Model United Nations, when Kramer's opening keynote speech, which was rife with incrimination of the Chinese citizenry for obsequiousness towards the Chinese government and Communist Party, incited a walkout of 300 Chinese visitors, prompting Kramer to cut the much-advertised speech short. Kramer has since pushed back on the backlash, suggesting that the Chinese students who were invited to the event are close to the Chinese political elite, and that their walkout only reinforced the point of his remarks. Later, Kramer suggested that students close to authoritarian power groups should not have been invited to an event focused on the promotion of peace and diplomacy. Mr. Kramer currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Halifax International Security Forum and a Member of the Advisory Council for the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Human Freedom Project, as well as a member of the International Advisory Council at the Center for European Policy Analysis. In addition, Kramer is a member of the Ukraine Today media organization's International Supervisory Council. In 2016 Kramer argued that the Minsk II peace agreement should be scrapped and western sanctions on Russia maintained. In 2018, he was on a list of Americans to be questioned by the Russian government. David Kramer, the then-Sen. John McCain aide who leaked the Christopher Steele dossier on President Trump, testified in a libel case that he spread to journalists the contents of the Steele dossier during the presidential transition. Kramer was identified as the source of the dossier in a recently unsealed deposition related to the libel case brought by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev against Buzzfeed.
