Category Archives: Roosevelt House Introductions

Domestic Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions

BID Challenge Awards Remarks

November 27, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

BID Challenge Awards

On November 27, 2012 Jonathan Fanton recognized the New York City Business Improvement Districts which earned BID Challenge Grants from the city. The grants “encourage innovation and creativity in neighborhood development programs at Business Improvement Districts across the five boroughs.” For additional information, click here.

For additional information on the winners and Dr. Fanton’s role in selecting them, click here

I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of Roosevelt House, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this occasion which recognizes the accomplishments of the innovative Business Improvement Districts which are winners of the first BID Challenge grants. It is my privilege to chair the selection committee which had the difficult job of choosing the winners from an extraordinary field of applicants.

We gather in the houses of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. She built these twin townhouses in 1907 and gave number 49 to Eleanor and Franklin as a wedding gift. They lived here until moving to the White House in 1932. It was here they raised their 5 children, entertained guests like Frances Perkins and Mary McLeod Bethune, and where Franklin recovered from polio to return to political life in 1928 when he ran for Governor.

I hope you will look around the houses, see the spot by the parlor fireplace on the second floor where Franklin made his first address to the nation as President-elect, visit his study where the New Deal was planned, his Cabinet recruited. Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to the Cabinet, recalled her recruitment in that room where she and FDR agreed to create the Social Security Program.

Franklin and Eleanor would be pleased that we are gathered in their house to honor local initiative and neighborhood leaders. They understood the importance of community development. Hear Franklin’s words in a 1933 Fireside Chat talking about employment creation and economic development:

Our program “will succeed if our people understand it — in the big industries, in the little shops, in the great cities and … small villages. There is nothing complicated about it and there is nothing particularly new in the principle. It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”

We are living in an era when people the world over are gravitating to cities. The percent of the US population that is urban has grown to 80.7% and around the world, the percent of humanity now living in cities is roughly 50%, up from 30% 60 years ago.

But people do not move to cities so much as they do to neighborhoods. That is the genius of the robust network of 67 Business Improvement Districts that make New York a great place to live and work. We know the names: Bedford- Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, 125th Street, Bayside Village, Forest Avenue Staten Island and Union Square where I was co-chair of the Local Development Corporation for 17 years making common cause with Rob Walsh.

I saw first-hand how neighborhood groups, businesses, institutions came together to fashion creative spaces, platforms for renewal but also for innovation and opportunity. Local initiative is the way of the future. Our world is undergoing a “Big Shift” from the familiar world of “push” where decisions come top-down to the world of “pull” in which people come together in self-forming networks to get the information they need to create new initiatives, tap new markets, provide services people really need and will use.

The BID Challenge Awards are a celebration of the Power of Pull, a world in which the aggregate energy of neighborhood groups is the engine which makes the larger city more competitive globally but all more just and humane with opportunity for all.

We are fortunate that the great work that Rob Walsh and his colleagues are accomplishing has a wise, caring and determined advocate one step from the Mayor. I have the pleasure of introducing Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Robert Steel. After a successful business career including 30 years at Goldman Sachs and service as Under-Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, Bob Steel has applied his immense talent to supporting the local economy of New York’s diverse neighborhoods.

Since his appointment, the Deputy Mayor has had the opportunity to visit many of your neighborhoods with Commissioner Walsh, pounding the pavement in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the Hub 3rd Avenue in the Bronx, and St. George, Staten Island, just to name a few – each time recognizing the great work of our Neighborhood Leaders and the organizations you represent. Not only has he attracted the first Applied Science Campus to our great City, bolstering the growing technology sector, but he has also created the first Bank Advisory Council that is dedicated to helping new and small business secure loans, expand their customer base and thrive. Through this work, he embodies what it means to be a Leader. Through his leadership he carries on the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt who is smiling down with approval.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Deputy Mayor Robert Steel.

Foreign Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions

Fatou Bensouda Reception

September 21, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

On September 21, 2012 Jonathan Fanton introduced Fatou Bensouda, the new Prosecutor of the ICC at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute.

Fatou Bensouda Reception

September 21, 2012

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the historic home of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. This reception is in honor of Fatou Bensouda, the new Prosecutor of the ICC who has been meeting here with the Coalition for the ICC. We are pleased to co-host this reception with the Coalition and in a moment its convenor, Bill Pace, will introduce the Prosecutor for brief remarks.

We have many distinguished guests here this evening but let me call out just a few:

Louise Arbour, the (handwriting) former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, now President and CEO of the International Crisis Group
Aryeh Neier, the founding Director of Human Rights Watch and long-time President of the Soros Foundation, who has done so much to strengthen the emerging system of International Justice
Christian Wenaweser, the Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations and
Bruno Stagno Ugarte, also a former president of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court, as well as the previous Minister of Foreign Relations of Costa Rica and the Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations.

It is appropriate that the Coalition for the ICC meets in the historic homes of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. The committee that developed the Commission on Human Rights met at Hunter College in 1946. And its chair was Eleanor Roosevelt who led the process of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She served as the first US representative for the new Commission. As Eleanor said in December 1948, “We stand today at the threshold of a great event in the life of the UN and in the life of mankind… the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … this declaration may well become the international Magna Carta….”

This is the place that Eleanor and Franklin lived from 1908 until they went to the White House. It was here that Eleanor deepened her social conscience, learned about people in poverty, came to understand that discrimination was real and pervasive and fired her passion for defending the human rights of people everywhere.

When Sara died in 1941 Franklin and Eleanor made a donation so Hunter could purchase the house. The houses were an interfaith student center until they closed in 1992 in disrepair. Under the leadership of President Jennifer Raab they were restored and opened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. The Institute offers two undergraduate programs, one in public policy and the other in human rights and international justice. I am pleased that some of our students and faculty are here tonight. Because of the Roosevelts, we feel a deep connection to the UN and other international organizations and are pleased to offer a rich variety of public programs, for example, Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Louis Moreno OCampo, Lousie Arbour to mention just a few of our speakers in the last two years.

We are especially happy to work with Bill Pace who has been and extraordinary leader of the Coalition for the ICC. The Coalition has done so much to rally support in countries around the world to speed the ratification of the Rome Treaty, now ratified by 121 countries and signed by 139 nations.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bill Pace.

Roosevelt House Introductions, Video

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s “The Betrayal of the American Dream”

September 5, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

On September 5, 2012 Jonathan Fanton delivered an address introducing Donald L. Barlett’s and James B. Steele’s The Betrayal of the American Dream, which discusses the fate of the American middle class over the course of the twentieth century. The talk was a part of Roosevelt House’s “Road to November: Exploring America’s Challenges On the Way to Election 2012” series.

Barlett & Steele – Betrayal of the American Dream

September 5, 2012

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 of The Betrayal of the American Dream by Donald Barlett and James Steele, two of America’s most distinguished journalists. Our moderator, Richard Tofel, will introduce them in a moment.

I am also pleased to welcome you to the historic homes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. I say “homes” because Sara began to build two adjoining townhouses in 1907 and gave one to Eleanor and Franklin in 1908. The story of the Roosevelt family in these houses will be told through a documentary “Treasures of New York, Roosevelt House” to be aired on October 11 on Channel 13 at 8:30 pm and screened here at Roosevelt House on October 11.

The houses came to Hunter in 1942 when Sara died and Eleanor and Franklin helped Hunter purchase them from the estate to be used as an interfaith student center. After a vigorous life as a student center, the houses closed in disrepair in 1992 and were boarded up until Hunter President Jennifer Raab rescued them in 2008. After careful renovation they reopened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, offering undergraduate programs in public policy and human rights. The Institute supports faculty research and offers programs for the general public.

In this election season, Roosevelt House is sponsoring a series called “The Road to November,” an in-depth look at issues that are – or should be – central to the campaign. The future of the American middle class is on the line in this election. The next administration will face hard choices about how to stimulate growth and address the deficit, including the future of Social Security and Medicare, so important to middle class America.

The Betrayal of the American Dream is a must read as we prepare to cast our votes this November. It examines inequities in the tax code, calls for investment in infrastructure that helps businesses and creates jobs, and focuses on what it will take to increase the growth in the manufacturing sector of our economy. “Who says that bipartisanship is dead in Washington?” the authors ask. “It’s worked to perfection in trade policy with devastating consequences.” I doubt trade policy will be a central issue in this election, but it should be. The Betrayal of the American Dream educated me about flaws and policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations.

When I began reading this book I literally could not put it down. It mixes heroic personal stories of middle class suffering with a well documented analysis of the forces which are assaulting the middle class.

It is poignant that we talk about The Betrayal of the American Dream under the watchful gaze of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. This is where Franklin Roosevelt assembled his administration and crafted the New Deal that advanced the American Dream. Upstairs in his study, he recruited Frances Perkins to be Secretary of Labor and made the commitment to Social Security. As Franklin himself noted in 1933: “I have said that we cannot attain [a lasting prosperity] in a nation half boom and half broke. If all of our people have work and fair wages and fair profits, they can buy the products of their neighbors and business is good. … It doesn’t help much if the fortunate half is very prosperous… The best way is for everybody to be reasonably prosperous.”

The Betrayal of the American Dream is a story of the assault on that vision.

To lead our conversation tonight, I am pleased to introduce Richard Tofel, the general manager of ProPublica. ProPublica is a non-profit organization founded in 2007 and headquartered here in New York that produces hard-hitting, independent investigative journalism on many of the important issues of the day. In 2010, ProPublica became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center. It has partnered with over 90 different news organizations including 60 Minutes, CNN and The New York Times. Before coming to ProPublica, Richard was the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, president of the International Freedom Center, and Vice President and Legal Counsel for the Rockefeller Foundation. He holds a law degree and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and is author of four books, most recently Reckless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Richard Tofel, Donald Barlett and James Steele.

Foreign Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions, Video

Book Talk: A Discussion of William Dobson’s The Dictator’s Learning Curve

July 24, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

On July 24, 2012, Jonathan Fanton sat down with William Dobson for a conversation about his recent book entitled, “The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy.”

The Dictator’s Learning Curve

July 24, 2012

Good Evening, I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute located in the historic homes of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. The Institute offers undergraduate programs in domestic public policy and international human rights, supports faculty research and sponsors programs for the public.

Tonight we welcome William Dobson for a discussion of his important new book The Dictator’s Learning Curve. He helps us understand how both authoritarian regimes and their opposition are using new technologies in the struggle to advance democracy.

Mr. Dobson notes in his introduction: “…Today’s dictators … are far more sophisticated, savvy, and nimble than they once were. Faced with growing pressures, the smartest among them neither hardened their regimes into police states nor closed themselves off from the world; instead, they learned and adapted. For dozens of authoritarian regimes, the challenge posed by democracy’s advance led to experimentation, creativity, and cunning. Modern authoritarians have successfully honed new techniques, methods, and formulas for preserving power, refashioning dictatorship for the modern age.”

But, as we will hear, this book is about much more that the Dictator’s Learning Curve. Mr. Dobson gives equal time to the learning curve of the opposition and the global conversation among dissidents about how to mount non-violent revolutions. And he helps us understand the importance of local opposition in eroding a regime’s legitimacy, puts in perspective the role of international actors like the US and the UN, and offers practical insights about the patient path to democratic change.

William J. Dobson is a distinguished journalist, scholar, and foreign policy commentator. He was a Truman Scholar, an award recognizing exceptional college students interested in public service, and holds both a law degree and a Masters in East Asian studies from Harvard University. In 2006, Mr. Dobson was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and from 2008 to 2009 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has published articles and op-eds in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe, among others. Most recently, he produced a series of online articles for the Washington Post that used the first recorded accounts of the Egyptian military’s human rights abuses of female prisoners to highlight the brutalities of modern authoritarianism. Prior to his current post as the Politics and Foreign Affairs editor for Slate, Mr. Dobson served as the Managing Editor for Foreign Policy magazine, Newsweek International’s Senior Editor for Asia and the Associate Editor for Foreign Affairs. He can be heard on major news outlets including ABC, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and NPR.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome William J. Dobson.

Foreign Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions, Video

Frank Costigliola, “Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances”

May 31, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

Frank Costigliola Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War Introduction
May 31, 2012

On May 31, 2012, Frank Costigliola came to Roosevelt House for a discussion about his new book entitled Roosevelt’s Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War. The landmark study examines how Franklin Roosevelt cultivated a sound Cold War diplomacy through his strong interpersonal skills and intuitive insights into the backgrounds, experiences, and emotions of Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This event was part of Roosevelt House’s “Road to November: Exploring America’s Challenges on the Way to Election 2012” series.

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our discussion tonight on Frank Costigliola’s Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War.

We gather in the homes of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and Franklin’s mother, Sara. Sara built these twin townhouses and gave one to Franklin and Eleanor as a wedding gift in 1908. It was here that Franklin recovered from polio in 1921, perhaps in this place developing the personality traits central to narrative we will be discussing tonight.

The New Deal was shaped in these houses, Cabinet secretaries like Frances Perkins recruited here, commitments made to programs like Social Security. Think of members of FDR’s inner circle and emotional support walking these halls – Louis Howe living in the front bedroom on the 3rd floor.

The houses came to Hunter in 1942 after Sara Roosevelt’s death, made possible by an initial gift from Franklin and Eleanor that enabled Hunter to purchase them from the estate. The houses were an interfaith and student center from then until 1992 when they closed in disrepair.

Tonight, we address an important topic: the origins of the Cold War and how events might have taken a different turn had Franklin Roosevelt lived. And we will reflect on the craft of history. Frank Costigliola reminds us “the Cold War was not inevitable,” a lesson we should apply more generally to the past, present and future. People, personalities and relationships matter, can change the course of history. As Professor Costigliola concludes in his introduction, “Examining the nexus between public and private helps us see the messy way that history really happens.”

Behind me is a picture of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at Yalta. Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances paints a sensitive portrait of Roosevelt and Stalin’s relationship. Concluding Roosevelt “wielded a razor-sharp emotional intelligence. Masterful in reading personality and in negotiating subtle transactions of pride and respect he could charm almost anyone. He deployed these skills with surprising success in establishing a bond with Stalin.” So much so that Stalin reportedly said as Yalta concluded “Let’s hope nothing happens to Roosevelt . We shall never do business again with anyone like him.”

I think Eleanor and Franklin would be pleased that we are having this conversation tonight in their home. They believed that leadership and personal relationships could shape and change the course of history.

I want to extend a special welcome to Professor Costigliola. He attended Hamilton College and received his PhD from Cornell University. He is a distinguished scholar who has written widely on the Cold War and foreign policy. His books Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933 (1984) and France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War II (1992) examine the geopolitical, cultural, psychological, and intellectual underpinnings of American diplomacy with Europe in the twentieth century. Since 1998, Professor Costigliola has taught at the University of Connecticut and, in 2009, he served as President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Currently, he is editing George Kennan’s diary entries, which cover an 80 year time period.

It is also my pleasure to introduce tonight’s moderator, Professor Jonathan Rosenberg. He is a true renaissance man. After earning a degree from Juilliard and performing professionally as a classical trumpeter, he received his PhD in History from Harvard. He now teaches twentieth century United States history at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His research focuses on both the domestic and international ramifications of America’s engagement with the world. Professor Rosenberg has edited and published several important books on the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, including Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes, which was based on secret Oval Office recordings made by JFK and LBJ. And, more recently, How Far the Promised Land: World Affairs and the Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam. Currently, he is writing a book that investigates how classical musicians, composers, and performing organizations in the United States understood and responded to international developments from the First World War to the Cold War, no doubt a fitting research topic for a talented musician.

Jonathan…

Domestic Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions, Video

Ira Shapiro, “The Last Great Senate”

May 8, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

The Last Great Senate
May 8, 2012

On May 8, 2012 Ira Shapiro came to the Roosevelt House to discuss his book entitled The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis. In examining the Congresses of the 1960s and 1970s, Shapiro reminds us that the Legislature can be a vehicle for great national reform and leadership. Jonathan Fanton introduced Professor Shapiro and The Last Great Senate. This event was part of Roosevelt House’s “Road to November: Exploring America’s Challenges on the Way to the Election of 2012” series.

Good Evening, I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the historic home of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Tonight’s conversation with Ira Shapiro on his book The Last Great Senate is part of a Roosevelt House series on the Road to the Election of 2012. Please pick up a flier which describes other programs which we hope will be of interest to you. We began the series with a conference on the domestic accomplishments of Lyndon Johnson, a preview of what the Last Great Senate accomplished.

I think FDR would be pleased that we are having this conversation in his home this evening, moderated by Jonathan Alter who gave the very first talk in the Roosevelt House book series on The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope.

FDR understood the importance of a great Congress. Hear his words, in a June 1934 Fireside Chat on the record of the Seventy-third Congress: “Congress displayed a greater freedom from mere partisanship than any other peace-time Congress since the Administration of President Washington himself. The session was distinguished by the extent and variety of legislation enacted and by the intelligence and good will of debate upon these measures.”

While FDR would not be happy about our current Congress, which, according to a recent Gallup Poll, has the support of only 10% of all Americans, he would have admired the Last Great Senate. And used it.

Ira Shapiro has written an important book that reminds us there is more at stake in this fall’s election than the Presidency. The Last Great Senate is a call to action. As Ira Shapiro put it so eloquently: “What is most urgently needed is for Senators to act like Senators, not partisan operatives. They should not mirror, and even exacerbate, the nation’s divisions. They were sent to Washington to overcome them.”

It is my pleasure now to introduce Peter Osnos who will open tonight’s program. He is an active member of Roosevelt House’s Board of Advisors, and we benefit enormously from his experience as a journalist, editor and publisher.

Early in his career he was both foreign and national editor of the Washington Post, then a senior editor at Random House until he founded PublicAffairs in 1997. PublicAffairs is the leading publisher of books that advance our understanding of public lives and policies they have shaped including books by or about Robert McNamara, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Barack Obama.

And about issues important to our democracy including the government response to 9/11 (William Shawcross’ Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and/or Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach’s Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed Bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda), global antipoverty initiatives (Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee’s Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty) education policy (Wendy Kopp’s A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All), and corporate decision-making (George Soros’ Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States and/or Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s The Betrayal of the American Dream). The Last Great Senate deepens the tradition.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the best publisher of our time, Peter Osnos.

Foreign Policy, Roosevelt House Introductions

John Lewis Gaddis, “Kennan: An American Life”

February 23, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

On February 23, 2012 Roosevelt House hosted a discussion between Professor Jonathan Rosenberg and John Lewis Gaddis about Gaddis’ new book entitled Kennan: An American Life, a comprehensive biography of the famous creator of the Cold War “containment” theory. Jonathan Fanton introduced both speakers below.

John Lewis Gaddis Kennan: An American Life Introduction
February 23, 2012

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our discussion tonight on John Lewis Gaddis’ George Kennan: An American Life. Mr. Gaddis is a distinguished scholar who has written extensively on the Cold War and post-war American national security. Our moderator will make a full introduction in a moment but I want to extend a special welcome to Professor Gaddis whom I have known through our common commitment to Yale where he is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History. As it happens, I wrote my dissertation at Yale on Robert Lovett who was Assistant Secretary of War for Air in the Roosevelt Administration and Under-Secretary of State and later Secretary of Defense for Harry Truman. Professor Gaddis and I share admiration for Robert Lovett, an underappreciated but important figure in American National Security Policy.

So it is a special pleasure to welcome the Robert Lovett Professor of History to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s home.

I am also pleased that George Kennan’s daughter, Grace Kennan Warnecke, is with us tonight.

Thanks to the vision and determination of Hunter President Jennifer Raab, the Roosevelt Houses were renovated two years ago and now host Hunter’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. The Institute offers undergraduate programs in domestic policy and international human rights and fosters collaboration among faculties and departments from across Hunter for interdisciplinary research. It also offers a series of lectures and conferences designed to bring policymakers, experts, and scholars together to talk about critical historical and contemporary issues. On March 14, Roosevelt House will sponsor a conference on the domestic side of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Robert Caro will give the keynote address.

It is fitting to discuss the life and work of Mr. Kennan in this space. At a time of unprecedented international conflict, he spent the formative years of his career in the Roosevelt Administration. After Franklin established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1934, Kennan served as Third Secretary the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, as head of the Russian desk at the State Department, and as deputy chief to the U.S. mission in Moscow in 1944. During this time, Kennan met several times with the President to discuss how best to recreate an ordered and sustainable peace after World War II. Though the two sometimes differed, the diplomat could not help but admire how Roosevelt conducted foreign policy: Every great statesmen, Kennan acknowledged, “has to be the judge of compromises he must make in the form of a certain amount of showmanship and prestidigitation in order to retain the privilege of conducting foreign policy at all. No one understood this better than FDR.”

It is also my pleasure to introduce tonight’s panelist, Dr. Jonathan Rosenberg. Professor Rosenberg received his PhD from Harvard and teaches both graduate and undergraduate classes in twentieth century United State history at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His research focuses on both the domestic and international ramifications of America’s engagement with the world. Dr. Rosenberg has edited and published several important books on the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, including Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes, which was based on secret Oval Office recordings made my JFK and LBJ and, more recently, How Far the Promised Land: World Affairs and the Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam. Currently, he is writing a book that examines how classical musicians, composers, and performing organizations in the United States understood and responded to international developments from the First World War to the Cold War — a fitting subject for a graduate of Juilliard and a professional trumpetist prior to his arrival at Harvard.

Jonathan…

Roosevelt House Introductions

ASPEN Institute Remarks

February 15, 2012 jfanton Leave a comment

On February 15, 2012 Roosevelt House hosted its latest installment of the Aspen at Roosevelt House series, which creates a space for scholars, artists, and policymakers to discuss the role of the arts in contemporary America. In his opening remarks below, Jonathan Fanton highlights the ways in which the Roosevelts supported the arts as a means to create a more vigorous democracy.

Aspen Institute at Roosevelt House

February 15, 2012

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. It is my great pleasure to welcome you back for the latest program in the Aspen at Roosevelt House series, which provides a forum for discussing the role of the arts in contemporary American life. We are delighted to continue our partnership with the Aspen Institute Arts program, which fosters collaboration among artists, sponsors, and policymakers to maintain the vibrancy of the arts around the globe. And we thank Aspen for arranging a discussion with Hunter students earlier today exposing the thinkers and doers of the future to this extraordinary panel.

Tonight we will explore, together, how cultural institutions can create and design places that enable the public to engage more fully with art and architecture.

You are in one of those spaces and we are honored that the architect for the restoration of the Roosevelt Houses, James Stewart Polshek, is with us this evening.

I say “houses” because Franklin’s mother, Sara, built twin townhouses and gave one to Franklin and Eleanor as a wedding gift in 1908. These houses were the center of family life for the Roosevelts until they moved to the White House. This is where Eleanor and Franklin raised their children, where Franklin recuperated from polio, where he planned his return to public life, where he made his first address to the Nation as President-elect from the second floor drawing room and planned the New Deal from his private study looking out on 65th Street. After the program walk around and feel the history.

When mother Sara died, Franklin and Eleanor wanted the houses to go to Hunter College and, in 1943, they became an interfaith student center until 1992 when they closed in disrepair. They stood vacant, deteriorating, until Hunter President Jennifer Raab had the vision and determination to renovate the houses as a public policy institute.

James Polshek, together with his colleagues, including Richard Olcott, did a brilliant job in restoring the beautiful details of the rooms while adapting them to meet current codes and find a new life as an academic building. The only addition is this intimate auditorium, now a center for public discussions of critical issues.

In addition to public programs like this one, the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute offers undergraduate degrees in domestic policy and international human rights and brings faculty from across Hunter departments together for interdisciplinary research projects.

It is appropriate that the Aspen series on “Spaces for Creative Dialogue in the 21st Century” is located here.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt understood the central role of the arts in deepening our understanding of our common humanity and firing our ambition to build a just and humane society. Hear Eleanor’s words at the 1934 Annual Convention of the American Federation of Artists talking about the importance of the arts which, in her words, have “the power to make people hear and understand, through music and literature, or to paint something which we ordinary people feel but cannot reveal. That great gift is something which, …if … given …support and …help…, is going to mean an enormous amount in our development as a people. …from these years of hard times, if we … have gained the acceptance … that the Government has an interest in the development of artistic expression, … and if we have been able to widen… the interest of the people as a whole in art, [then] we have reaped a really golden harvest out of what many of us feel have been barren years.”

And these words were backed up with deeds. The Federal Theater and Federal Arts Projects gave work to writers and artists in theater, visual arts, and music; established arts education programs in community centers and schools; and helped infuse art and culture into the lives of ordinary Americans during the height of the Depression. And the Civil Works Administration restored prominent buildings like the Montana State Capitol and built majestic new ones like the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh.

These and other New Deal projects are brought to vivid life in the photography exhibit on display on the first and lower floors right here in this house. It includes works by legendary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks. We invite all of you to tour both the exhibit and the houses before you leave today. We are also proud to have a complete collection of WPA Guides, the indispensible travel guidebooks created by the Federal Writers Project, that gave work to such budding writers as Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel and Richard Wright.

The next generation of creators and conservators of our culture are being trained at Hunter in theater, film, music, art history, painting, photography, dance and writing. Indeed a new program supported by the Mellon Foundation, Hunter’s “Arts Across the Curriculum” provides faculty with the opportunity to introduce new forms of visual and performing art, and creative writing into their classrooms.

So there are three good reasons why we are gathered in the right place: a college that cares deeply about the role of the arts in our society; in the home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who did so much to nurture artists and public art; and in a space that encourages open and intimate conversations about important public issues.

It is now my pleasure to introduce today’s moderator, legendary ballet dancer and the Director of the arts programs at the Aspen Institute, Damian Woetzel. Damian was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for 20 years, has worked as a choreographer, teacher, a tireless arts advocate, and, recently, as the director of the first performance of the White House Dance Series hosted by Michelle Obama. What better example of the spirit and legacy of Franklin and Eleanor, and who better to lead our conversation.

Roosevelt House Introductions

Babatunde Osotimehin Introduction

November 9, 2011 jfanton Leave a comment

On November 9, 2011 Jonathan Fanton introduced Babtunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund, for a discussion on global maternal mortality rates and issues of women’s health more generally.

Introduction of Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin

November 09, 2011

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of Roosevelt House, and it is my honor to welcome you to a very special evening. Our guest is Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund.

It is a special pleasure for me because he is my friend, colleague and mentor. When I was President of the MacArthur Foundation our population program focused on the improvement of maternal health and the reduction of maternal mortality. Our theory was straightforward: if women and their families have access to good information and health care they will make sensible reproductive choices. We focused on reduction of maternal mortality, a critical goal in itself, as a key indicator of whether women were getting adequate reproductive health counseling and care. Over 350,000 women die every year giving birth, 99% in the developing world. That represents one death every 90 seconds, so 60 women will die during the 90 minutes we are together. And the great majority of those deaths are preventable.

We see an inextricable link between respecting human rights and population policy. One of our focus countries is Nigeria. And that is where I first met Dr. Osotimehin a decade ago when he was a professor at the University of Ibadan and Chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS.

Dr. Osotimehin was the principal advisor to MacArthur’s population work not just in Nigeria but worldwide. He served on our International Advisory Group for Population and Reproductive Health and was a Distinguished Resident Fellow at our Chicago offices in 1996.

He is well prepared for his current appointment as the UN’s Chief Population officer. He completed his medical studies at the University of Ibadan and then received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Birmingham. He has been a Fellow at Cornell’s Medical School and at Harvard’s Center for Population and Development Studies.

He has seamlessly combined a career of scholarship, reflection and purposeful action. He was Provost of the College of the Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Project Manager of the World Bank funded HIV/AIDS program in Nigeria, Director-General of the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS and Minister of Health for Nigeria, to mention just a few of his leadership positions.

As Minister of Health he focused on strengthening the basic primary health care system in Nigeria. He has a comprehensive view of health care: “It is everything together,” he said, “We must invest in health systems that can look after everything and invest in prevention, prevention, prevention.” And on his watch Nigeria achieved a dramatic decline in the rate of new polio cases. He showed great diplomatic skill in engaging community leaders, especially in the North, to support immunization.

On October 31, just 10 days ago, it is estimated that the world’s population surpassed 7 billion. There are an estimated 1.8 billion adolescents and youth aged 10-24, more than a quarter of the world’s population, and almost 90% of them live in developing countries. Dr. Osotimehin has therefore made youth the focus of UNFPA, especially women.

In his statement to the UNFPA Executive Board he made an eloquent call to action:

“Advancing the right to sexual and reproductive health lies at the heart of UNFPA. To garner greater progress, we will advocate for investments by countries and donors for a comprehensive package of integrated sexual and reproductive health services as well as comprehensive sexuality education.”

And he has made human rights a cornerstone of his approach. In that same speech he said, “We will continue to champion human rights, including girls’ education through the secondary level, and the right of women and girls to be educated and make informed decisions about sexual and reproductive health. We will continue to work to advance reproductive rights, end child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting and improve prospects for adolescent girls. UNFPA will also continue to work to end sexual violence and further advance the women, peace and security agenda.”

He will tell us about the work of UNFPA and give us a candid assessment of the prospects for reaching MDG #5, the reduction of maternal mortality by 50% by 2015.

As we look the images of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt behind us, I think they would be pleased we are addressing these serious issues in their home through the lens of the United Nations.

After Dr. Osotimehin talks we will have a conversation and invite your questions.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin.

Roosevelt House Introductions, Uncategorized

Robert Orr Introduction

October 26, 2011 jfanton Leave a comment

On October 26, 2011, Jonathan Fanton introduced Robert C. Orr, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning. Orr discussed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s agenda for his second term, and previewed the themes of the Secretary-General’s acceptance speech planned for January 2012.

Robert Orr – Introduction

October 26, 2011

Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of Roosevelt House, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to an event which exemplifies the mission of Roosevelt House. Our guest, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for Planning and Policy, Robert Orr, will preview the themes that will animate Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s second term. Robert Orr is working closely with the Secretary-General in framing the priorities for the next five years, a daunting task given the daily crises, long term challenges, and opportunities to create a safe and more just world that lie ahead.

I came to know Bob Orr when I was President of the MacArthur Foundation and we worked on issues like reducing dangers from biological and chemical weapons, protecting the environment, advancing human rights and framing the new norm of the Responsibility to Protect, a commitment we have seen engaged in Kenya, the Ivory Coast and Libya.

I came to admire his vision of what the UN can be at its best, his commitment to make the UN an effective force for advancing humankind’s noblest instincts and aspirations and his ability to get things done. Widely respected and trusted by people and countries who do not trust each other, he is a human bridge of understanding, able to build coalitions that advance the Secretary-General’s goals.

He combines theory and practice as well as anyone I know. With a Ph.D. and M.P.A. from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, he has led the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard, served as Director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, published extensively on post-conflict situations, including Winning the Peace: an American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador.

On the practice side, he has been Director of the USUN Washington office and Director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council. In his current role he is responsible for the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee and is a policy advisor to Ban Ki-moon on counter terrorism strategy, climate change, food security, global health, reducing the dangers of WMD and more.

And we are particularly grateful to you, Bob, for encouraging the Secretary-General to preside over the official opening of Roosevelt House last year. His presence – and yours today – serve as a powerful reminder that within these walls Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt helped conceive and develop the United Nations. Your talk today is central to the mission of Roosevelt house: bringing policy makers together with students, faculty and the general public to explore the most pressing issues of the day.

So we are privileged for an advanced insight into the agenda in formation for Ban Ki-moon’s second term and appreciate your openness to questions, reactions and suggestions during the discussion period to follow you rem