On March 8, 2017, Jonathan Fanton introduced a panel discussion on “Ethics and the Global War on Terror: Can Conflicts with Non-State Actors Be Fought in a Just Way?” The panel was chaired by Allen S. Weiner; and the panel consisted of Gabriella Blum, Neta C. Crawford, and Jennifer Leaning.
The discussion was streamed to groups of Academy members and other distinguished participants gathered in Washington, D.C., Stanford University, and Notre Dame University, in addition to cadets and faculty at West Point, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. When the panel concluded its presentations, members in each location held their own conversations.
The meeting served as the 2017 Distinguished Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture.
Good evening. It is my pleasure to welcome you and to call to order the 2052nd Stated Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This is also one of our Morton L. Mandel Public Lectures, established through a donation from the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is part of the Morton L. Mandel Program for Civic Discourse and Membership Engagement, which aims to strengthen the bonds of community among the Academy’s 5,500 members as we stimulate discussion of important issues with the general public. We are enormously grateful to Mort for his generosity.
Tonight’s topic is particularly important and timely; it also raises complex legal, ethical, and political questions. How should military fight against terrorist groups? Should these groups be protected under the Geneva Convention like soldiers of regular armies, or should they instead be treated differently? What are the moral boundaries and constraints that should not be violated in an all-out war against terror?
It was September 20, 2001 when President George W. Bush used the term “war on terror” for the first time. Nine days earlier, the United States had been subjected to the largest and bloodiest terrorist attack ever carried out on its own soil. The term “war on terror” was meant to signify an enduring, global campaign to eradicate terrorism everywhere. But the term itself also produced significant legal and political consequences. The use of the word “war” designated the American counterterrorist strategy no longer as a law enforcement operation but as a war with the scale and consequences that any other war would carry. Additionally, because terrorism is a global phenomenon, this meant a serious U.S. military commitment around the world to fight a threat that was borderless in nature.
On Tuesday, February 28, 2017, President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Jonathan F. Fanton addressed more than 100 Congressional staff members and members of the Academy’s Commission on Language Learning at a press conference to release its final report and recommendations at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
This is the final publication of the Academy’s Commission on Language Learning. The Academy created this Commission in response to a bipartisan request from members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives: Senators Orrin Hatch, Brian Schatz, Tammy Baldwin, and Mark Kirk; and Representatives David Price, Don Young, Leonard Lance, and Rush Holt.
The title of this report, America’s Languages, refers to an important historic fact about our nation, and one of its great strengths. As the Commission writes in the report’s introduction:
“Linguistic diversity is deeply embedded in our history. The English we speak is only one of many European, Native American, African, and Asian languages that have been spoken on the North American continent. This diversity is a cherished part of our nation’s past, a fact of our present, and a key to our future: a valuable asset in our relations with other nations and cultures and a benefit to our children as they grow up in an interconnected world.”
In addressing the need for enhanced language education, this report brings the American Academy all the way back to one of its original concerns.
On Tuesday, December 2, 2016, President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Jonathan F. Fanton addressed members of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and several dozen members of the Academy in Berlin, Germany.
Good afternoon and thank you for hosting us here today. The American Academy has 596 foreign honorary members from 45 countries, in addition to our approximately 4,000 members in the United States. We are actively trying to engage our foreign honorary members in the Academy’s work and are very happy to see you all here today.
We have begun to hold gatherings with our members around the world. For example, this fall alone we have convened meetings in Paris, London, and Israel.
As we reach out to members in other countries, Germany has been high on our list because of the many connections between scholars here and in the U.S.
We currently have 70 members (7 fellows and 63 foreign honorary members) in Germany, with 18 based in Berlin. A total of 252 members affiliated with Germany have been elected since Johann Jacob Hemmer was elected in 1788. Over the years, other prominent members have included:
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859); elected 1822, FHM
Jacob Ludwig Grimm, (1785-1863); elected 1857, FHM
Max Planck, (1858-1947); elected 1914, FHM
Albert Einstein, (1879-1955); elected 1924, FHM
Werner Karl Heisenberg, (1901-1976); elected 1958, FHM
We added five new German members in the Class of 2016.
They are:
Hans-Joachim Freund, (1951-); Director and Scientific Member, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; elected 2016, FHM
Gerd Gigerenzer, (1947-); Professor; Director, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung; elected 2016, FHM
Joachim Küpper, (1952-); Professor of Romance Literatures and Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin; elected 2016, FHM
Horst Bredekamp, (1947-); Professor of Art History, Humboldt University; elected 2016, FHM
Christof Niehrs, (1962-); Executive and Scientific Director, Institute of Molecular Biology; elected 2016, FHM
On November 30, 2016, Jonathan Fanton introduced a discussion focused on the “Responsibility to Protect Cultural Heritage” at the British Academy in London. The discussion was co-hosted with the Getty Trust.
Good morning. I am Jonathan Fanton, President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and it is my pleasure to welcome you to our meeting to discuss the international community’s role in preserving at-risk cultural heritage around the world. We are honored to co-host this meeting with the Getty Trust, which has been a leader in the conversation of cultural heritage around the world. Let me give some background on the American Academy and then turn the proceedings over to Getty President James Cuno, who will moderate our meeting.
The American Academy, founded in 1780, is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. When the Academy was created, the War for Independence had not ended and the American Constitution had not been drafted, yet the Academy’s founders, led by John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin, were already looking to the future, anticipating our young republic’s needs for new knowledge and practical ideas.
From its beginnings the Academy has brought together the nation’s and the world’s most distinguished citizens to address social and intellectual issues of common concern and to translate knowledge into action. Timely research and publications are central to the Academy’s mission to promote useful knowledge and advance the public good. As an independent research center, the Academy is known for multidisciplinary, nonpartisan research that provides evidence-based approaches for complex challenges in the areas of Science, Engineering, Technology, Humanities, Arts, Education, American Institutions, and Global Security. Today’s meeting is a good example of such an interdisciplinary project bridging the worlds of art and history with global security and human rights.
On November 10, 2016, Jonathan Fanton introduced a panel discussion focused on “Populism and the Future of American Politics.”
The panelists were: Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Lawrence D. Bobo, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University; and Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University.
The discussion served as the 2045th Stated Meeting of the American Academy.
From left to right: Jennifer Hochschild, Lawrence Bobo, and Charles Stewart discuss populism at the House of the Academy in Cambridge, MA.
Charles Stewart III and Jonathan Fanton converse during the reception for “Populism and the Future of American Politics.”
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, President of the American Academy. It is my pleasure to welcome you, and to call to order the 2045th Stated Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This evening’s program, on “Populism and the Future of American Politics,” could hardly be more timely—indeed, it has been a subject that has likely been on the mind of everyone in this room for the past several months. And when we chose it we did not anticipate the outcome of Tuesday’s election. I think this is a topic that some—maybe many—of us feel the need to talk about this week.
“Populism” is a term that did not exist when the Academy was founded in 1780. When the authors of the Academy’s charter wrote that the “end and design of the institution of the said Academy is to … cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people,” they meant something very different by the term “people” than did those who coined the “populist” label in the late 19th century.
It is clear that the founders of the Academy would not have described themselves as populists in the current sense of the term. Their view of classical populism would have been informed by the warnings of classical philosophers, such as Aristotle, who in Politics defined a “demagogic democracy” as a society where a popular faction “takes the superior share in the government as a prize of victory,” incited by the misleading rhetoric of a charismatic leader. Plato laid out the results in his Republic, predicting that the people—an “obedient mob”—would “set up one man as their special leader … and make him grow great.” These observations have more meaning to me today than when I prepared this Introduction two weeks ago.
On May 15, 2014, Jonathan sat down with renowned New York City restauranteur, Danny Meyer, to discuss his life in and outside of the restaurant business. Jonathan’s introductory remarks are below and video of the event will be available shortly.The conversation lasts 40 minutes, followed by a Q&A session with members of the audience.
In Conversation with Danny Meyer
May 15, 2014
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute and it is my pleasure to welcome you to a very special evening. Many of you have been here before to enjoy book discussions like Bruce Katz’s Metropolitan Revolution or tohear global leaders like South African Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron. Or attend major conferences like “John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream,” a fresh look at lessons from his time as Mayor.
But tonight is different. For the past few years I have had a series of public conversations at Roosevelt House with the most interesting people I know personally. Ed Koch was my first guest, followed by former MoMa President Agnes Gund, James Lipton of Inside the Actor’s Studio, Vartan Gregorian of the Carnegie Foundation, Judy Collins, and most recently, Joseph Califano and former Columbia President Michael Sovern.
My guest tonight is Danny Meyer, New York’s leading restaurateur. You know the names, Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Maialino, Blue Smoke, Untitled at the Whitney and The Modern at MoMA and, of course, Shake Shack. How many in the audience have eaten at one of Danny’s places?
Danny is from St. Louis, majored in Political Science at Trinity College, worked in Italy in his father’s tour business and opened his first restaurant at age 27, The Union Square Café. And that is how we know each other – I was President of the New School and Chair of the Union Square – 14th Street Local Development Corporation at the time and Danny joined our Board. He was one of the pioneers in the transformation of Union Square from “Needle Park” as it was known in the early 80’s, to the safe, clean, vibrant Park it is today.
He was the model of a responsible, engaged businessman taking an interest in the people, institutions and local businesses that called Union Square home. And when I moved to Chicago to head the MacArthur Foundation, Danny was one of the key people who assumed leadership of the LDC. Speaking of Chicago, we have another tie: his grandfather, Irving Harris was a friend of mine in Chicago as we shared so many interests from the Harris Public Policy School at the University of Chicago to the Ounce of Prevention Fund, which provides underserved communities with high quality early childhood care and education. I know Irving was very proud of Danny’s accomplishments.
Danny has written several books: The Union Square Café Cookbook,Second Helpings From Union Square Café, and the one I like the best, Setting the Table:The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business . Setting the Table gives us an insight into Danny’s deep caring for humanity, his respect for his employees and the customer experience, his taste for risk, his dedication to quality.
That quality is reflected in numerous awards and prizes. Danny and the Union Square Hospitality Group account for 14 James Beard Awards, and 3 of New York City’s top 10 most popular restaurants according to Zagat’s 2014 Survey, a list that in the past has been topped by Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern 15 times.
But his recognition goes far beyond his restaurant work. In 2010 Cooper Union recognized him with its Urban Citizenship Award, and NYU followed a year later with the Lewis Rudin Award of Exemplary Service for New York. In addition to the Union Square LDC, Danny has served on the Boards of Share Our Strength, City Harvest and the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
So we have a lot to talk about. Danny and I will chat for about 35-40 minutes and then open to your questions. Our program will finish at 7:15.
On May 14, 2014, Roosevelt House hosted an event that looked into the state of immigrant justice in America. Mirela Iverac of WNYC moderated a panel that consisted of Justice Robert Katzmann, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Angela Fernandez, Executive Director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights and co-founder of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, and Peter L. Markowitz, Interim Executive Director of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Jonathan provided introductory remarks, which are included below. Video will be made available shortly.
Improving Immigrant Access to Justice: Innovative Approaches
May 14, 2014
Good evening, I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. It is my pleasure to welcome you to a discussion on innovative approaches to improving immigrant access to justice.
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt would have been pleased that we gather in their home tonight to explore this topic so central to our values and national character. Hear Franklin’s words in his October 1940 radio address to the Herald Tribune Forum. He spoke of how immigrants contribute to our country when he said:
“…These varied Americans with varied backgrounds are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. All of them are inheritors of the same stalwart tradition—a tradition of unusual enterprise, of adventurousness, of courage ‘to pull up stakes and git moving.’ That has been the great, compelling force in our history. Our continent, our hemisphere, has been populated by people who wanted a life better than the life they had previously known. They were willing to undergo all conceivable perils, all conceivable hardships, to achieve the better life. They were animated just as we are animated by this compelling force today. It is what makes us Americans…They built a system in which Government and people are one—a nation which is a partnership and can continue as a partnership. That is our strength today.” It is this sense of partnership and our panelists’ commitment to fairness and the rule of law that brings us together tonight.
But I think FDR would be troubled, as we are, by these startling facts:
In New York City, 60% of detained immigrants facing deportation do not have attorneys by the time their cases are completed.
It is estimated that 40% of undocumented children are eligible for legal status but only a few have legal counsel to help them secure that status.
And individuals not detained but who face deportation are successful in their case 74% of the time if they have legal counsel, but only 13% if they are unrepresented. Quite a difference.
One of our panelists tonight, Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Robert Katzmann, has taken the lead in addressing this shocking situation. In 2007 he gave the Marden Lecture at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York about the unmet needs of the immigrant poor. It was rich in evidence of how badly immigrants facing deportation were treated by both administrative and judicial arms of our government. And it was a clarion call for reform. “We are a nation of immigrants, whose contributions have been vital to who we are and hope to be. All too often immigrants are deprived of adequate legal representation, essential if they and their families are to live openly and with security. This failure should be a concern for all of us committed to the fair and efficient administration of justice.”
A year later, Judge Katzmann convened a study group on immigrant deportation made up of 50 leading lawyers in private practice, leaders of immigrant service organizations, government officials and more. It commissioned a New York Immigrant Population Study which documented the statistics I cited earlier. Its work lead to the establishment of two important projects we will discuss this evening. Starting this year, the Immigrant Justice Corps-spearheaded by Justice Katzmann’s efforts – began its work of providing New York’s immigrant population with high-quality legal assistance. The I.J.C. recruits from a pool of talented young lawyers and law students around the country, partnering them with non-profits that specialize in immigration assistance. The founding of the Corps marks the largest expansion of immigration legal services in New York’s City’s history.
We have a distinguished moderator today who will help to facilitate what I know will be a thoughtful and lively discussion. I am delighted to introduce Mirela Iverac, a reporter for WNYC, where she covers topics on poverty and immigration. In 2013, Mirela won a Gracie award for Outstanding Reporter for her coverage of those issues. Prior to joining WNYC, she was a freelance contributor to the New York Times. Mirela holds master’s degrees in journalism from Columbia University and in international affairs from the University of Cambridge, U.K.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mirela Iverac from WNYC who will introduce the other panelists this evening.
On May 12, 2014, the Roosevelt House welcomed a panel discussion exploring the city of the future, co-hosted by the World Policy Institute. The panelists included Jill S. Gross, Associate Professor in Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, Marc Norman, Director of UPSTATE: Center for Design, Research and Real Estate, and Emeka Okafor, Co-Founder and Curator at Maker Faire Africa. Kavitha Rajagopalan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Emergent Cities Project at the WPI moderated the event. Jonathan provided introductory remarks, which are provided here. Video of the event may be viewed below.
Making the Emergent City: A Panel Discussion
May 12, 2014
Good evening, I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. It is my pleasure to welcome you to a program we are doing in partnership with the World Policy Institute, a panel discussion on “Making the Emergent City.” As more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, a number expected to grow to 6.3 billion by 2050, the future of the cities is a topic to which Roosevelt House will devote considerable attention.
Earlier this academic year, Bruce Katz of Brookings came to discuss his new book, The Metropolitan Revolution, in which he argues for a New Hanseatic League of international cities which will learn from one another. Tonight’s program will deepen our exploration of the future of cities worldwide.
I am very glad Roosevelt House and the World Policy Institute are making common cause on this program. When I was President of the New School, then WPI Director Arch Gillies and I merged the WPI into the New School and we were proud to have it and The World Policy Journal as part of our University. Its longtime editors, James Chace and Karl Meyer, and WPI leaders like Sherle Schwenniger and Fellow Walter Russell Mead added to the University’s intellectual vitality.
When I was doing our due diligence before the merger, I talked with Les Gelb, then head of the Council on Foreign Relations. He praised the WPI for its fresh thinking, for getting ahead of the issues, for bringing a different perspective, for example, understanding the changes in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and the shift in the balance between economic and military concerns.
After my time, the New School made the mistake of encouraging the WPI to become an independent institution again, but many New School trustees like Henry Arnhold and Michael Gellert remain vitally interested in it as do I.
Tonight’s program we think will stimulate complex and creative thinking around the contradictory fate of the 21st century city – the exploding megacities of the Global South and the shrinking Rust Belt cities of the Global North. Tonight’s conversation will help us understand the challenges facing cities and some of the lessons that New York and other US cities might learn from emerging mega-cities around the world.
We gather in the homes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. I think FDR would be pleased with our topic tonight. “Making the Emergent City,” will look at what the informal sector, citizens themselves, can do to build cities that are decent places to live and work, resilient, and avenues of opportunity for people of all backgrounds to improve their lives.
FDR understood that government could not fix every problem, that local initiative was important. Hear his words speaking to his neighbors in Poughkeepsie in 1933,
“More men and more women are taking an individual, a personal, interest in all the problems – the social relations and economic and political problems – than ever before in the history of the Nation, and I hope that that interest will be extended to the problems of the local government as well.”
And he understood that business as usual would not do. Like the World Policy Institute, he challenged us to see our problems in all their complexity and be bold in thinking about future solutions. Giving a commencement address at Oglethorpe University in 1932, he said,
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation… We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you.”
And that leads to our topic tonight. How citizens from Detroit to Lagos to Katmandu can remake their cities.
To introduce and moderate our panel tonight, I will now call on Kavitha Rajagopalan, Senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-leader of the Institute’s Emergent Cities Program. The program develops and pilots new ways to “activate” resilient urban spaces in the economically troubled and shrinking cities of the West, using lessons from cities in the developing world characterized by high rates of migration and informality, i.e. “emergent” cities. Kavitha is the author of Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West, a narrative nonfiction examination of migration, integration and identity formation in three Muslin immigrant families – a Palestinian family from Jerusalem to London, a Kurdish family from Turkey to Berlin, a Bangladeshi family from Dhaka to New York City. Her projects include research and advocacy on the causes and consequences of undocumented migration, urban informality, and minority access to mainstream financial systems. She writes widely on global migration and diversity and has taught related courses at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs.
After the panel talks for about 40 minutes, we will open the conversation for your questions and conclude by 7:15 pm.
On May 6, 2014 Roosevelt House hosted the final installment of the series, “Anxieties of Democracy,” in partnership with the Social Science Research Council. Titled, “Are the people the problem?” the event brought together two distinguished panelists: Jane Mansbridge of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author of Beyond Adversary Democracy, and Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. In a stimulating discussion, moderated by Jonathan, the two scholars examined the role of human behavior in the political process–how it can both facilitate and hinder political and economic development. These are Jonathan’s introductory remarks. Video of the event can be viewed below.
SSRC, Anxieties of Democracy
“Are the people the problem?”
May 6, 2014
Good evening, I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute.
It is a particular pleasure to welcome to you to the third in a series of Roosevelt House-Social Science Research Council events on the pressing subject of ‘Anxieties of Democracy.’ Roosevelt House is devoted to public discussion of just such fundamental issues, so this partnership with the SSRC is based on deep affinities for the deployment of rigorous research and knowledge in the social sciences in the public interest. Likewise, the Social Science Research Council, now entering its tenth decade, is devoted to advancing scholarship on the most critical issues of the day, and to promoting conservations within the academy and well beyond. Together, both organizations are committed to an informed public sphere and to a robust civic culture.
The SSRC’s program on democracy asks how representative democracies can be strengthened to govern more effectively. It is motivated by the sense that the core institutions of our democracy that connect citizens to the political system–institutions that include elections, mass media, political parties, interest groups, and social movements–are not working terribly well, and that the American people, both in particular groups and the citizenry as a whole, have lost a significant degree of faith in whether our democracy can address large problems such as climate change, poverty, and personal and national security effectively, legitimately, and accountably.
Within the coming week, the SSRC’s work on ‘Anxieties of Democracy’ will launch its website on http://www.ssrc.org. This digital resource will open the posting of think pieces on democratic dilemmas written by thirty leading scholars and journalists who participated in formulating the scope and direction of the program during the past year.
The prior two sessions in the current series conducted in this House–a home where Eleanor and Franklin thought hard about the role of government and its abilities to solve big problems–examined the causes and significance of ideological polarization in our political life, and why Congress has recently had so much difficulty in governing effectively. The focus on polarization and the discussion of Congress largely concentrated on the beliefs, actions, and shortcomings of political leaders. Tonight, we shift gears. We are asking, to what extent are the people the problem? Intentionally provocative, the question invites us to think about what citizens know, how they think, what they prefer, the ways they are informed, the character of public voices, the manner in which citizens act, and how each of these dimensions of civic participation shape the character and prospects of our democracy.
FDR would be pleased we are having this discussion in his home tonight. Hear his reflections on the state of our democracy in a 1938 Fireside Chat:
“We in America know that our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need to act together, to meet the problems of the Nation boldly, and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people.”
Then as now we face big, vexing issues. It is my hunch that our two distinguished speakers believe that it is less the people who are the problem than the ways the media, the parties, and money in political life shape what citizens know and believe and affect how they behave. But as theirs are rich and sometimes surprising voices, I, like you, keenly look forward to hearing from these two distinguished scholars and public intellectuals.
Jane Mansbridge, recently president of the American Political Science Association, is Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Her current work includes studies of representation, democratic deliberation, everyday activism, and the public understanding of collective action problems. She is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy, an empirical and normative study of face-to-face democracy, and the award-winning Why We Lost the ERA, a study of social movements based on organizing for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Paul Starr, the holder of a Pulitzer Prize, is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. His current interests concern the sociology of knowledge, patterns of technology, and information, especially as they bear on democracy. With Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich, he co-founded the influential magazine The American Prospect. He recently published Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform.
One further introductory remark: I am substituting this evening for Ira Katznelson, president of the SSRC. Ira has been awarded the Sidney Hillman Book Prize for his recently published Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. At just this moment, the award is being conferred at The New York Times. Ira, who sends apologies for his absence, asked me to step in to moderate the conversation that will follow the presentations by Professors Mansbridge and Starr. They will each speak for about 15 minutes. The three of us then will proceed to a conversation, followed by a period of questions. Our program concludes about 7:20. We begin with Professor Mansbridge.
On May 1, 2014, Jonathan sat down with former Lieutenant Governor of New York, Richard Ravitch, to discuss his lifelong engagement in New York politics and commitment to public service. After introductory remarks by Hunter College President, Jennifer Raab, Mr. Ravitch spoke for 15 minutes before he was joined by Jonathan. Their discussion was then followed by a Q&A session with members of the audience.
