In his 33 years as a Singapore diplomat, Kishore took on many challenging assignments, serving for example in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1973/74 when the city was shelled almost every day. Shrapnel penetrated the walls of his house. He also served in Kuala Lumpur and Washington D.C. and had two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN (1984-1989 and 1998-2004). He held the apex position of Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1998 and was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singaporean Government in 1998.
Kishore had an equally illustrious career in academia. He was appointed the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in August 2004. Within five years, the LKY School was admitted to the Global Public Policy Network, a small elite club of Schools of Public Policy (with the other members coming from Columbia University, London School of Economics, and Sciences Po, Paris). Despite his heavy administrative duties, Kishore proved to be a prolific author. He has published nine books: Can Asians Think?, Beyond The Age Of Innocence, The New Asian Hemisphere, The Great Convergence, Can Singapore Survive?, The ASEAN Miracle (co-authored with Jeffery Sng), Has the West Lost It?, Has China Won, and The Asian 21st Century, an open access book which has been downloaded 3.5 million times since it was published in 2022. His tenth book, Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir, is slated for release in August 2024.
Kishore has received global recognition for his intellectual contributions, having been listed several times in the list of top global thinkers by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. The Financial Times listed him as one of fifty individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. Perhaps the best summary of Kishore’s contributions was made in the citation for the US Foreign Policy Association Medal he received in June 2004: “a gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker.”
Kishore has held positions in several globally significant committees. He was the founding chairman of the nominating committee of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize (2009 to 2019). He also served on the Commission of Eminent Persons to revive the future of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2007/08, under the chairmanship of the former President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo. In April 2019, he was the second Singaporean to be elected as an honorary international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which has honoured distinguished thinkers, including several of America’s Founding Fathers, since 1780.
在他33年的新加坡外交官生涯中，马凯硕先生承担了许多挑战性任务。例如，在1973/74年，他在柬埔寨金边任职时，城市几乎每天都遭受炮击，弹片甚至穿透了他的住宅墙壁。他还曾在吉隆坡和华盛顿特区任职，并两次担任新加坡驻联合国大使（1984-1989年和1998-2004年）。他于1994年至1998年担任新加坡外交部常务秘书，并在1998年获得了新加坡政府颁发的公共行政金奖章。
在学术界，马凯硕先生同样成就卓著。他于2004年8月被任命为李光耀公共政策学院的创院院长。仅五年不到，李光耀学院就被纳入全球公共政策网络，一个由精英公共政策学院组成的小型俱乐部（其他成员来自哥伦比亚大学、伦敦经济学院和巴黎政治学院）。尽管行政职责繁重，马凯硕先生还是一位作家，并出版了九本书，其中包括《亚洲人能思考吗？》《超越纯真年代》《新亚洲半球》《大融合》《新加坡能生存吗？》《东盟奇迹》（与杰弗里·宋（Jeffery Sng）合著）、《西洋西下》《中国的选择》以及《亚洲的21世纪》，一本自2022年出版以来已被下载350万次的开放访问书籍。他的第十本书《生活在亚洲世纪：不外交的回忆录》计划于2024年8月发布。
马凯硕先生因其智力贡献在全球范围内获得了认可，多次被《外交政策》和《展望》杂志列为全球顶级思想家之一。《金融时报》将他列为塑造资本主义未来辩论的五十人之一。2004年6月，他在纽约获得了美国外交政策协会奖章，评语称他为“有天赋的外交官、历史与哲学的学生、挑衅的作家和直觉的思想家”，也许这就是对马凯硕的贡献的最好总结。
此外，马凯硕先生还在多个具有全球意义的委员会中担任职务。他是李光耀世界城市奖提名委员会的创始主席（2009年至2019年）。他还在2007/08年担任国际原子能机构（IAEA）未来重振问题委员会成员，该委员会由墨西哥前总统埃内斯托·塞迪略（Ernesto Zedillo）主持。2019年4月，他成为第二位当选为美国人文与科学院荣誉国际成员的新加坡人，自1780年以来，该学院一直在表彰杰出的思想家，多位美国国父曾受表彰。