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.
On June 18, 2012 Jonathan Fanton announced the recipients of the 2011 Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize. Awarded by the Hunter Foundation, the prize recognizes an individual or nonprofit organization in the New York metropolitan area for outstanding accomplishment in the field of urban public health.
Tisch Prize Award Ceremony
June 18, 2012
Good evening. As Chair of the Selection Committee of the Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize let me begin by saying what a pleasure and honor it has been to serve in this capacity again this year.
From my time at The MacArthur Foundation, I have a special appreciation for how awards can elevate the importance of a field by honoring outstanding people and organizations. The field of Community Health deserves our recognition and respect.
Before I announce the recipients, let me tell you about the selection process and criteria.
The 10-member Selection Committee, most of whom are here this evening, was comprised of Hunter faculty from the Schools of Public Health, Social Work and Nursing, and the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning—Neal Cohen, Lynn Roberts, Judith Rosenberger, Judith Aponte and John Chin—as well as external health policy experts—Dennis Rivera, John McDonough, Georges Benjamin and Sue Kaplan. Both John and Georges are former Tisch Public Health Fellows. Again, thank you all for your service.
We received 40 outstanding nominations. Thank you to all of the nominators and references for introducing us to such worthy candidates. The quality and range of their work is breathtaking, representing all parts of our city and many approaches to improving urban public health. For example, the nominees included: a health expert in East Harlem battling the environmental causes of asthma; a breast cancer screening program in Manhattan tailored specifically to women with physical disabilities; a Queens program to provide free care and screenings to the uninsured and new immigrants; and an organization providing housing, health and social services to mentally ill homeless populations throughout the city.
All of the nominees are working on health problems associated with poverty and reducing health inequities. And all are deserving. It was difficult to choose only one individual and one organization.
We used three main criteria in our review. The first was outstanding Achievement in the development of an urban health initiative. The second was Imagination in tackling a public health problem and the third was Impact—lasting improvement in health and well-being, and potential for replication.
Today’s recipients are emblematic of many heroic individuals and organizations who work to make New York a more just, humane and healthier place to live. There will be more moving stories to recognize in future years.
I speak for all members of the Selection Committee when I say that this was a very uplifting assignment. Thank you President Raab for giving us the opportunity, and thanks to Joan Tisch for inspiring this award and to her children for honoring her in this way.
And now to announce the recipients of the second annual Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize—
The 2012 “organization” recipient is the LegalHealth unit of New York Legal Assistance Group. LegalHealth unites legal and health care professionals who work collaboratively to improve the lives of low-income people with serious health problems by: addressing the legal needs associated with poverty that undermine recovery; eliminating legal barriers to services; and educating health care professionals about their patients’ legal needs.
Nominator Joe Baker, President of the Medicare Rights Center, noted that LegalHealth has taken the medical-legal partnership model “to a new level, maximizing its impact while expanding new arenas for implementation.” In fact LegalHealth is now the largest such partnership in the nation and has served over 17,000 clients and trained over 5,000 health care professionals. It further extends its mission through legislative advocacy. Last fall it was instrumental in getting state legislation passed and signed by Governor Cuomo to expand medical-legal partnerships throughout New York State.
Let me provide some examples of LegalHealth’s work. In representing an asthma patient, it might take action against a landlord to force repairs to housing conditions triggering the disease, such as mold and vermin. To help a cancer patient avoid additional stresses that might compromise her condition, LegalHealth makes plans for care of dependents, or resolves debt and credit issues. Another client service is helping patients apply for government benefits, like food stamps.
In his letter of reference, Dr. Howard Minkoff, Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center explained, “My fellow physicians and I are painfully aware that even when we can readily diagnose illness and when there are highly efficacious therapies, if patients cannot access their medication because of homelessness, problems with health insurance, or threat of deportation, our ability to treat them and manage their illnesses will remain illusory. It is the … staff at LegalHealth who translate “hypothetical” benefits into actual cures through their focus on the non-medical barriers to care.”
LegalHealth tells a broader story about community health—that health outcomes are often dependent on myriad “non-medical” factors that left unchecked lead to health inequities. LegalHealth inspires others to seek innovative ways to tackle these social determinants of health, making it eminently worthy of the second annual Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize.
The “individual” recipient is Mark Hannay, Executive Director of the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign. In the words of his nominator, Dr. Terry Mizrahi [Miz-RAH-hee] of Hunter’s Social Work faculty, “Mark is a truly exceptional health advocate whose leadership as a coalition-builder, spokesperson and tireless organizer has galvanized New Yorkers to join successful community-based campaigns to expand access to health care, particularly for those with serious illnesses and disabilities, the uninsured and the voiceless.”
Mark has built Metro NY Health Care into a vibrant coalition of community, labor, professional and faith-based groups, to fight for fundamental reform leading to universal health care. Among the campaigns he has mobilized and helped lead are those:
enacting New York’s Managed Care Consumers’ Bill of Rights;
creating New York’s Family Health Plus program;
stopping harmful budget cuts to New York’s Medicaid program;
enacting financial aid programs to assist uninsured and underinsured patients in all New York hospitals;
And he has been on the front lines of advocacy for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Richard Gottfried, Chair of the New York State Assembly Health Committee, said of Mark: “[he] … is one of those rare advocates who is not only committed, but also thoughtful and understands the complexities of policy issues and political processes and the balance that often must be struck along the way.”
And Elisabeth Benjamin, Vice President at the Community Services Society, praised Mark’s “imagination, unwavering patience, and ability to build enthusiasm often seemingly from thin air.”
In addition to his advocacy work, Mark also educates thousands of New Yorkers on key health issues through a radio interview program and cable TV show.
For his principled passion and reasoned eloquence in the fight for health care as a basic human right, for his vision of a just society, and for the impact he has had on countless New Yorkers in need, Mark Hannay has earned the second annual Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize.
I now have the pleasure of introducing John McDonough who will moderate a conversation with Mark Hannay and Randye Retkin, Director of LegalHealth.
John is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of its new Center for Public Health Leadership. In 2010, he was the inaugural Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College, and between 2008 and 2010 he served as Senior Advisor on National Health Reform to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Prior to that, he was Executive Director of Health Care For All, Massachusetts’ leading consumer health advocacy organization, where he played a key role in the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law. His book, Inside National Health Reform, is a compelling insider’s account of the passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act.
We are delighted that he has returned to Roosevelt House this evening to engage our two distinguished Tisch Prize recipients in a conversation about their important work.
John…..
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.
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 two undergraduate programs, one in Public Policy and the other in Human Rights and International Justice. And it offers a robust public program of lectures, conferences and discussions of important domestic and international issues.
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.
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.
On April 24, 2012 Jonathan Fanton sat down with Bob Edar for a discussion about his work as head of Common Cause, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to increase transparency and accountability in American politics. For more information on Common Cause, click here.
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of Roosevelt House, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to our ongoing program on the election of 2012. Tonight we have a very special guest, Bob Edgar, who is President of Common Cause, a movement of over 400,000 members determined to improve our democratic form of government. Its mission statement is direct, powerful and inspiring: “Common Cause is dedicated to restoring the values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government that serves the public interest and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process.”
That statement resonates with one of Roosevelt House’s central themes: to encourage the Hunter community, especially students, to engage in the political process. Voter registration is available on the first floor of the Roosevelt House. And our Public Policy Program is helping first-time voters understand how to translate their views and opinions into informed votes whether for individuals or on issue referenda. Indeed, this is a theme of our ongoing series, The Road to November: Exploring America’s Challenges on the Way to Election 2012, which examines the key social, political, and economic issues preceding the November 2012 Presidential election. You might be interested in our next event in this series on May 8, when Jonathan Alter will engage Ira Shapiro in a conversation on his latest book, The Last Great Senate.
Surely, this series would impress Franklin Roosevelt, who said in one 1938 address to the nation that:
“The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.”
I am particularly pleased that Bob Edgar is part of this program. I joined the Board of Common Cause not only because I believe in its mission but because I think Bob Edgar is an extraordinary leader.
Trained in theology at Drew University, he was the United Protestant Chaplain of Drexel University until being elected to the House of Representatives in 1975. During his six terms in the House Congressman Edgar led efforts to improve public transportation, fought wasteful, pork-barrel projects involving the country’s water usage and supply and authored the community Right to Know provision of Super Fund legislation. After Congress, he was President of the Claremont School of Theology for a decade and then served as general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ.
Under his leadership, Common Cause has new energy and focus. He will tell us, I am sure, about the Amend 2012 campaign aimed at cleansing our electoral system of the pernicious influence of big money. And the Common Cause spotlight on redistricting programs, efforts to modify the filibuster system, improve government accountability and transparency, challenge the tax-exempt status of the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC), and much more.
A recent poll suggests increasing numbers of Americans distrust our political process and policy formation. A Fall 2011 Congressional Budget Office poll found that 89% of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing. In a recent Gallup poll a record low 10% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing and 86% disapprove. An April 2012 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 64% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track (washingtonpost, April 11, 2012).
That is a dismal and deeply disturbing commentary on the state of our democracy which was founded as a “city upon a hill” to set a standard for the world. No wonder that our Constitution no longer serves as the model for new democracies.
A recent New York Times article entitled “The Constitution Has Seen Better Days” notes that “Among the world’s democracies, constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall” since the end of World War II. Even Justice Ginsburg said in a speech in Egypt earlier this year, “I would not look to the US Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”
This is not a state of affairs we should allow to continue. It is time for the American people to transcend party lines and engage with bipartisan organizations like Common Cause to get our democracy back on track.
Bob Edgar will share with us his ideas on what we as citizens can do. After his remarks, he and I will have a conversation for 10 minutes and then open up to your questions and comments.
On April 17, 2012 Jonathan Fanton sat down with Vartan Gregorian to discuss his renowned career as an educator, scholar, and philanthropic leader.
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, the Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. This historic building, home to Eleanor and Franklin, and Franklin’s mother, Sara, is now the center of Hunter College’s Public Policy program. In addition to teaching and research, Roosevelt House sponsors programs that bring policy maker together with faculty, students and the general public to discuss issues of the day.
Tonight’s program is a little different. I have long wanted to have a series of public conversations with the most interesting people I know personally, people I have met in my years at President of the New School and the MacArthur Foundation but also through civic activities such as Human Rights Watch.
My first guest was former Mayor Ed Koch. Our conversation, no surprise, focused on the local state and national political scene. Next was a conversation with Agnes Gund, former President of MOMA who is one of our country’s most articulate advocates for the arts and art education, a major collector and a builder of cultural institutions.
Tonight is a very special evening for me as we welcome one of my very closest friends, Vartan Gregorian, a mentor who has taught me much about the world, different cultures, indeed life itself. We first met when we both came to New York, he as President of the New York Public Library and I as President of the New School. His appointment as a Professor of History at the New School accelerated the revival of the New School’s Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science.
Vartan has lived an amazing life. Born in Tabriz, Iran of Armenian parents, he went to elementary school in Iran and secondary school in Lebanon before coming to Stanford in the late 1950’s where he earned both his undergraduate and Ph.D. in history. He taught at San Francisco State, UCLA, and The University of Texas before coming to the University of Pennsylvania where he was the founding Dean of Arts and Sciences and then Provost. We came to know him for reviving the New York Public Library in the 1980’s before moving to Brown University as Provost. And I had the pleasure of being his colleague again when he became President of the Carnegie Foundation when I was President of the MacArthur Foundation. We are both healthy skeptics of how large foundations work and so at the annual meeting of the big foundation Presidents we took care never to make eye contact lest we share a knowing smirk as one or another of our colleagues was going on about saving the world.
For all of his leadership accomplishments, Vartan is at heart a teacher and a scholar, one of those rare administrators who continued teaching. His books on Islam and the emergence of modern Afghanistan have founded renewed relevance. And his The Road to Home is the most honest and sensitive autobiography I have read.
Our mutual friend Bill Moyers describes Vartan as “an erudite charmer, a master of the handshake and bear hug, …..a champion of the public good. His passion for education, philanthropy and friendship is contagious.” And his colleague of many years, John Silber, said “He has the innocence of a baby, the integrity and dedication of a saint and the political skills of a Talleyrand.”
To that I would simply add that Vartan is the most loyal friend I know, always there to share the high points and cushion the reverses. He manages to see the world in all its complexity, a realist but not a cynic, an optimist but not a romantic, confident but humble.
We are all glad that the road to home brought Vartan back to New York.
Vartan, you are our north star, brightening our lives, putting our institutions on a sure course, making a complex universe more comprehensible and humane.
A wise woman once said you don’t build a reputation or make a name for yourself on what you are going to do. You just do it.
Vartan, your grandmother would be proud.
And I hope I have followed the advice she gave you as a youth: “Don’t insult a crocodile before you cross a river.”
On March 14-15, 2012 Roosevelt House organized an academic conference entitled Revisiting the Great Society: The Role of Government from FDR to LBJ to Today. The two-day event featured presentations by scholars, policymakers, and former national political leaders on the foundational initiatives of and ideas behind the Great Society. Four major panels — health care, education, poverty, and civil rights — sparked vigorous discussions about the role of government in American society and popular attitudes towards American political institutions then and now. Jonathan Fanton opened the conference with these remarks. To view the full conference schedule, click here.
Text of the speech:
Good morning. I am Jonathan Fanton, Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to these historic homes of Franklin and Eleanor, and Franklin’s mother, Sara. This is an appropriate setting for our conference which bears the subtitle of The Role of Government from FDR and LBJ to Today. Think back to the fall of 1932 as the New Deal took shape in this place, cabinet officers like Frances Perkins recruited here, commitments to programs like Social Security made in the President’s study on the second floor.
Thanks to the vision of President Jennifer Raab, Roosevelt House is now Hunter College’s Public Policy Institute, offering undergraduate programs in public policy and international human rights, sponsoring events for the general public and encouraging policy research across disciplinary lines. This conference is emblematic of Roosevelt House’s mission.
We heard yesterday about how deeply Lyndon Johnson respected Franklin Roosevelt. Johnson said this at the 20th anniversary of FDR’s death:
“Today’s America is his America more than it is the work of any man… . He had the gardener’s touch. In some mysterious way he could reach out, and where there was fear, came hope; where there was resignation, came excitement; where there was indifference, came compassion. And perhaps we can remember him most, not for what he did, but for what he made us want to do. We are trying to do it still. And I suppose we always will…”
And I suppose this is what we are about today.
The conference planners made a conscious decision to focus on LBJ’s domestic record from which we have much to learn. But we should not shy away from foreign policy and Vietnam as we explore presidential leadership, relations with Congress, public opinion and difficult budgetary trade-offs.
Robert Caro’s moving keynote last evening helped us appreciate the roots of Johnson’s instinctive passion for using the power of the presidency to fight poverty and discrimination .
The lively panel that followed gave us insight into how he did it, his love of the political process and steadfast commitment to making it work to fulfill the values and principles of the charter documents of our country.
Today we will see those skills in action as we take a deep look at four of Johnson’s major accomplishments: reducing poverty and opening opportunity, advancing the quality and availability of health care, expanding federal support for education, and promoting civil rights and confronting discrimination.
Each moderator will pose key questions for a conversation among our distinguished panelists. Then you will be invited to join the discussion. We hope each panel will touch on four themes:
presidential leadership;
the role and responsibility of government;
the challenges of implementing federal programs, including the Great Society’s successes, disappointments and unintended consequences;
the role of politics in framing, passing and carrying out programs, both then and now.
The last 100 years have seen a remarkable evolution in how we think about the role of government. The progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the New Deal, the Great Society were three periods of invention and commitment to a more just and humane society. But it is going on 50 years since Lyndon Johnson left office, close to five decades without a sustained focus on reform.
Problems have mounted, inequality has grown, unrest is brewing, and faith in government is at near record lows. The statistics are a powerful reminder of Johnson’s injunction that we have more work to do.
49 million people, or 16% of all Americans, live below the poverty line (Reuters).
Only 18% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country (gallup.com, January 11, 2012).
Lyndon Johnson, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson School in 1966, put a challenge to the young men and women training for careers in public service. Imagine him here today talking to our faculty and students in the home of his mentor.
He said: [You can] “help us answer the question that Franklin Roosevelt… asked more than 30 years ago: Will it be said that ‘Democracy was a great dream, but it could not do the job? President Roosevelt did not doubt the answer. … With his detractors and his defacers, with his dissenters and his doubters… he began to organize the modern Office of the President and to bring American government into the mid-twentieth century.”
Well we are now in a new century, facing an important election which will be a referendum on how well presidential power is being exercised. Part of the test will be the terms on which the 2012 campaign is waged. This is an inflection point in our history, a measure of how well our democracy mediates sharply divergent views on the role of government and contending interpretations of the values and principles upon which our nation is founded.
Presidential leadership has never been more important. And so, too, is the art of politics. As Johnson said of FDR, “He knew that leadership required not only vision but the skill to move men and to build institutions. And like every one of our great presidents, President Roosevelt was a great politician. He proved again and again that politics, scorned by so many, is an honorable calling.”
We have much to learn from Lyndon Johnson’s leadership as we gather in the home of the man from whom he learned so much. Perhaps we will distill some lessons from their experience which will benefit our current leaders.
To introduce our keynote speaker for today, I am pleased to call on Joe Califano from whom I have learned so much. I had the privilege of working with him at the start of his tenure as HEW Secretary. As the chief domestic advisor to LBJ, Joe was deeply involved in shaping and implementing Great Society programs. He is author of a dozen books including A Presidential Nation and The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. A lawyer by training, he is really a student of history but also an activist with a passion to learn from the past.
He wrote a dozen years ago, “What Lyndon Johnson was about during his presidency was social and economic revolution, nothing less. To what extent he succeeded and how beneficial his successes were I leave ….to the judgment of history.” Well, that is a good challenge for our work today.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Joseph Califano.
On March 7, 2012 Jonathan Fanton sat down with Agnes Gund to discuss her career and the ways in which an engagement with the arts can enrich American society. Gund has served on the boards of MoMA, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection. In addition, she is the founder of Studio in a School, a not-for-profit that brings professional artists into New York City’s public schools and helps teachers connect art with other academic subjects.
March 7, 2012
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, the FDR Fellow at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. This historic building, home to Eleanor and Franklin, and Franklin’s mother, Sara, is now the center of Hunter College’s Public Policy program. In addition to teaching and research, Roosevelt House sponsors programs that bring policy makers together with faculty, students, and the general public to discuss issues of the day.
Tonight’s program is a little different. I have long wanted to have a series of public conversations with the most interesting people I know personally, people I have met in my years as President of the New School and the MacArthur Foundation but also through civic activities such as Human Rights Watch.
My first guest was former Mayor Ed Koch. Our conversation, no surprise, focused on the local state and national political scene. Tonight will be different. My guest is Agnes Gund, a dear friend from whom I have learned so much about the arts and about life. She is one of our country’s most thoughtful advocates for the arts and art education, a major collector, a builder of cultural institutions and a force for shaping public policies that nourish our cultural lives. It is appropriate we gather under the approving gaze of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt who did so much to advance the arts during the Depression. Think of the Federal Theater, Writers and Arts Projects that nurtured photographers Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks whose work you passed as you came in.
Aggie and I first met at the New School through a great lady, Vera List. Vera asked Aggie to serve on a committee to collect art for the public spaces at the New School and to loan to students for their rooms. The committee helped create the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, which sponsors lively programs about the larger role of the arts in our society.
Aggie strongly supported the New School’s legal challenge to the Helms amendment that aimed to prevent government funding for art deemed obscene or indecent. The New School refused to accept the Helms condition and sued the NEA, a case that the NEA settled by dropping the Helms language from all of its grants. We would not have been able to take on this challenge without the support of Agnes Gund and her colleagues.
Agnes Gund has done more for the arts in our city and country that anyone I know. She has been Chair of MoMA, now chairs its International Council, has served on the Boards of the Getty, the Frick Collection, the Barnes Foundation, her home town Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. And that’s only a sample. She has been honored with the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton, and the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. She is a leader in art and cultural policy in her role as Chair of the mayor’s Cultural Affairs Commission and the New York State Council on the Arts.
There is much more but I want to mention just one more thing, something I suspect may mean more to her than all of the above. She is Founder and long-time Trustee and supporter of the Studio in a School Association. She started that organization in response to a 1976 decision to cut arts and music from the curriculum of New York’s public schools to save money. From modest beginnings in three elementary schools in 1977, the program is now in 160 schools, K-12. Aggie challenged the system to restore funding for art and music. And Studio in a School now supplements the standard curriculum with opportunities to learn painting, drawing, and sculpting from professional artists, helps teachers incorporate art into their standard subjects, offers art workshops on Saturdays and during vacations, and provides teacher training programs for advanced students.
For all of these accomplishments and accolades, Agnes Gund is a humble, decent, caring person and a loyal friend. She understands how the arts enrich our lives, deepen our humanity, bridge cultural differences, call forth the best in us to imagine a better world. And fire our determination to work for a more just and peaceful society with opportunity for all. She has exquisite taste in art, a laser instinct about people, unstoppable confidence in the potential of young people, courage to say what she thinks and to express her values in action.
On December 8, 2011, Jonathan Fanton reflected on how his Yale doctoral studies helped him develop leadership skills. Jonathan Fanton received a B.A. from Yale in 1965 and a Ph.D from Yale in 1978.
On October 24, 2011, Jonathan Fanton sat down with Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York City, to discuss his career, New York politics, and relevant issues in the country and city today.
Good evening. I am Jonathan Fanton, the FDR Fellow at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. This historic building, home to Eleanor and Franklin, and Franklin’s mother, Sara, is now the center of Hunter College public policy program. In addition to teaching and research, Roosevelt House sponsors programs that bring policy makers together with faculty, students, and the general public to discuss issues of the day.
Tonight’s program is a little different. I have long wanted to have a series of public conversations with the most interesting people I know personally, people I have met in my years as President of the New School and the MacArthur Foundation but also through civic activities such as Human Rights Watch.
I am delighted that my first guest is our former mayor, Ed Koch, who is a good friend and mentor. When I came to the city in 1982, Mayor Koch helped educate me about the mysteries and marvels of our city. He asked me to serve on a committee to review the state of the city’s homeless shelters, which was my first deep exposure to that challenge. And through my work as Chair of the 14th Street Union Square Development Corp., I saw how well the city worked under Ed Koch as I came to know his senior team like Parks Commissioner Henry Stein, Housing Commissioner Paul Crotty , and Deputy Mayor Alair Townsend.
As we became friends we had lunches and dinners together on a regular basis, occasions from which I always learned, not just about New York but about national and international affairs.
So what we are about to do is to bring you in on our ongoing conversations.
If there was ever a person who needed no introduction it is Ed Koch. Most of you have followed his career starting with the reform club Greenwich Village Independent Democrats through which he unseated long-time boss Carmine DeSapio as district leader.
A City Council seat came a year later and then in 1968 he was elected to the House of Representatives in a district that had not elected a Democrat since FDR’s first term. Among the marks he made in Congress, was as a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations where he proposed a cut-off of foreign aid to right-wing governments. Then in 1977, after winning a heated primary, he was elected mayor at a time when the City was on the financial rocks. He said, “We have been shaken by troubles that would have destroyed any other city. But we are not any other city. We are the city of New York and New York in adversity towers above any other city in the world.”
That deep faith in the people and institutions of our city, combined with hard work, courage, imagination, and a first-rate team, bought New York back from the precipice. And as the City regained control over its finances and its destiny, Ed Koch moved us from the defensive into a creative period. After years of instability and looming fiscal ruin, Ed Koch put New York back on a sound financial footing. He balanced the city’s budget and encouraged the growth of business in New York. He implemented a merit-based appointment system for judges, passed ordinances barring discrimination against gays and lesbians, and introduced the most ambitious housing program in the nation that stabilized our neighborhoods.
Speaking of neighborhoods, it was under Ed Koch that the first Business Improvement District was created in Union Square. He showed us that government and the community could work together to revitalize places like Union Square. Now there are 66 BIDS in all five boroughs – and mayors all over the country have followed his lead.
And life after Gracie Mansion has been full: columns on politics and world events, the best movie reviewer I know, appearances in more than 60 films and TV shows playing himself, and nearly 20 books from memoirs to mysteries, including a touching candid exchange with John Cardinal O’Connor. Ed Koch has remained relevant, a force for principled discourse unconstrained by the bounds of political correctness.
So I have violated the “Needs No Introduction” rule long enough. Let’s get on with the conversation.
Selected Works of Dr. Jonathan F. Fanton 